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Assigning nationality to a text is common practice — a method of categorizing a chaotic assembly of works into easily recognizable, and saleable, slots. The citizenship of an author is considered, by some, to be an adequate marker of the type of texts he or she creates. Yet the notion that Canadian authors produce 'Canadian' texts is problematic and restrictive. It presupposes a definitive Canadian culture on which the author may draw, an inability of the author to supersede his or her cultural inputs, and an acceptance that individual voices can speak for a diverse nation. So why do we gather unlike texts under the 'Canadian' umbrella? Unity is comforting, but diversity is reality in the realm of Canadian literature.
View all five works by Boucher, Lorie
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What Makes a Text Canadian: The Citizenship of Its Author or the Culture-Specific Insight of Its Prose?
http://www.writersblock.ca/spring2000/feature.htm
Boucher, Lorie
Writer's Block
2000
Abstract: Assigning nationality to a text is common practice — a method of categorizing a chaotic assembly of works into easily recognizable, and saleable, slots. The citizenship of an author is considered, by some, to be an adequate marker of the type of texts he or she creates. Yet the notion that Canadian authors produce 'Canadian' texts is problematic and restrictive. It presupposes a definitive Canadian culture on which the author may draw, an inability of the author to supersede his or her cultural inputs, and an acceptance that individual voices can speak for a diverse nation. So why do we gather unlike texts under the 'Canadian' umbrella? Unity is comforting, but diversity is reality in the realm of Canadian literature.
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