New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1771122072 ISBN 13: 9781771122078

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2017

Synopsis

What is the relationship between literature and the society in which it incubates? Are there common political, social, and economic factors that predominate during periods of heightened literary activity? New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East considers these questions and explores the relationships between periods of creative ferment in New Brunswick and the socio-cultural conditions of those times.

The province’s literature is ideally suited to such a study because of its bicultural character―in both English and French, periods of intense literary creativity occurred at different times and for different reasons. What emerges is a cultural geography in New Brunswick that has existed not in isolation from the rest of Canada but often at the creative forefront of imagined alternatives in identity and citizenship. At a time when cultural industries are threatened by forces that seek to negate difference and impose uniformity, New Brunswick at the Crossroads provides an understanding of the intersection of cultures and social economies, contributing to critical discussions about what constitutes “the creative” in Canadian society, especially in rural, non-central spaces like New Brunswick.

About this title

About the Author:

Tony Tremblay is a professor and Canada Research Chair in New Brunswick studies at St. Thomas University. He is founding editor of the Journal of New Brunswick Studies and the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia. His recent work includes Fred Cogswell: The Many-Dimensioned Self (2012), Last Shift: The Story of a Mill Town (2011), and David Adams Richards of the Miramichi (2010).

Review:

The result [of this book] is a magnificent, if necessarily episodic and partial, analysis of two of New Brunswick’s literatures, and I encourage the rest of the nation to peek at how the book’s blend of multidisciplinarity can be used for wider application. Even if a reader isn’t interested in reading another study of historical writers [...], there is much to recommend this book in terms of methodology. (Shane Neilsen)

About this edition

• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1771122072
• ISBN 13: 9781771122078
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 245
• Editor: Tremblay Tony