ReCalling Early Canada Reading the Political in Literary and Cultural Production

ReCalling Early Canada is the first book-length collection of essays to focus on Canadian literary and cultural production prior to WWI. While Canadian literature is often thought to have emerged in the mid-twentieth-century, the essays in this volume reflect a recent critical interest in earlier generations of cultural production. The authors do not limit their analyses to fiction and poetry_instead they welcome photographs, captivity narratives, family letters, and journalism as part of the repertoire of early Canadian readers. This book fills a significant gap in Canadian criticism, and it appeals both to seasoned scholars and to undergraduate students who may be new to Canadian historical research. Taking seriously the project of "recall," the essays here not only seek to deliver certain historical documents to the light of present-day critique, they also ask important theoretical and political questions about the various methodologies involved in doing so and the assumptions that accompany them. In effect, these essays combine a fresh interest in this burgeoning field of study with new approaches to historical inquiry. The result is a unique and diverse investigation of more than two centuries of a relatively unknown "early Canada."