Home Words: Discourses of Children’s Literature in CanadaMavis Reimer The essays in Home Words explore the complexity of the idea of home through various theoretical lenses and groupings of texts. One focus of this collection is the relation between the discourses of nation, which often represent the nation as home, and the discourses of home in children’s literature, which variously picture home as a dwelling, family, town or region, psychological comfort, and a place to start from and return to. These essays consider the myriad ways in which discourses of home underwrite both children’s and national literatures. Home Words reconfigures the field of Canadian children’s literature as it is usually represented by setting the study of English- and French-language texts side by side, and by paying sustained attention to the diversity of work by Canadian writers for children, including both Aboriginal peoples and racialized Canadians. It builds on the literary histories, bibliographical essays, and biographical criticism that have dominated the scholarship to date and sets out to determine and establish new directions for the study of Canadian children’s literature. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 27 | |
un espace privilégié en littérature de jeunesse québécoise | 51 |
Catharine Parr Traills Canadian Crusoes and the Robinsonade Tradition | 67 |
A Study of Canadian Aboriginal Picture Books by Aboriginal Authors | 87 |
A NonAboriginal Canadian Scholar Discusses Aboriginality and Property in Canadian DoubleFocalized Novels for Young Adults | 107 |
At Home with Multicultural Childrens Literature in Canada? | 129 |
CHAPTER 8 Windows as Homing Devices in Canadian Picture Books | 145 |
Fantasies of Nationhood in Australian and Canadian Texts | 177 |
Translating Scholarly Discourses for Young People | 195 |
Homeward Bound? | 225 |
WORKS CITED | 233 |
CONTRIBUTORS | 261 |
INDEX | 265 |
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Common terms and phrases
Aboriginal Aboriginal authors adult Anne of Green Beothuk Boréal c'est Canada Canadian children's literature Canadian Crusoes Cass chapter characters chil child children's books children's literature children's texts Coïncidence/Jeunesse colonial contemporary coureur des bois courte échelle critical cultural d'une Daveluy Deborah deux discourse domestic Éditions essay fait False Face father fiction FIGURE Flour Sack Flora Green Gables Hawthorn Bay historique homeless Huron Carol Iberville Québec ideology Illus indigenous island jeunes l'aventure land littérature de jeunesse Mary masks Mavis Reimer Menfou Métis monde Montréal mother multicultural n'est narrative nation Native Nodelman non-Aboriginal Nouvelle-France novel personnage picture books political protagonists qu'il québécoise question Rachna Gilmore racial readers Redwork representations Robinson Crusoe robinsonades romans sense settler Seven Little Australians Shanawdithit space Stéphane Jorisch story Suzanne Martel tion Tisseyre Toronto tout traditional Traill ture University of Winnipeg window Winnipeg writers of colour writing young
Popular passages
Page 86 - As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property.
Page 127 - We should strive to create wherever possible the conditions for dialogue and the practice of speaking with and to rather than speaking for others.
Page 133 - ... purity' of cultures are untenable, even before we resort to empirical historical instances that demonstrate their hybridity. [...] It is that Third Space, though unrepresentable in itself, which constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity...
Page 107 - For the author, the critic, the art dealer, the publisher or the theatre manager, the only legitimate accumulation consists in making a name for oneself, a known, recognized name, a capital of consecration implying a power to consecrate objects (with a trademark or signature) or persons (through publication, exhibition, etc.) and therefore to give value, and to appropriate the profits from this operation
Page xvii - It is in culture that we can seek out the range of meanings and ideas conveyed by the phrases belonging to or in a place, being at home in a place.
Page 111 - In particular, the practice of privileged persons speaking for or on behalf of less privileged persons has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reinforcing the oppression of the group spoken for.
Page 48 - When home is a privileged place, exempt from the most serious problems of life and civilization— when home is where we ought, on the whole, to stay— we are probably dealing with a story for children. When home is the chief place from which we must escape, either to grow up or (as in Huck's case) to remain innocent, then we are involved in a story for adolescents or adults.
Page 145 - ... it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible. Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over green low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea. Anne's beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily in; she had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child; but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed. She knelt there, lost to everything but the...
Page 14 - ... the estranging sense of the relocation of the home and the world the unhomeliness - that is the condition of extra-territorial and cross-cultural initiations.
Page 160 - Jesus, your King is born, Jesus is born; In Excelsis Gloria!" O children of the forest free, O sons of Manitou, The Holy Child of earth and heav'n is born today for you. Come, kneel before the radiant Boy Who brings you beauty, peace and joy. "Jesus, your King is born, Jesus is born; In Excelsis Gloria!