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This dissertation, titled Rewriting the past: pluralizing the present: renegotiating Canadianness in the works of Dionne Brand, George Elliott Clarke and Lawrence Hill, written by Gregor Pudzich, analyses the critical engagement with Canada’s colonial history, especially with the history of the African-Canadian minority, in the literary works of the three authors named in the title. In the context of current literary and cultural theories on different forms of memory, the literary works of Brand, Clarke and Hill are located in the discourse and critically analyzed with regard to their questioning of prevailing historical imaginaries. In the introduction of this dissertation, two working hypotheses are presented. The first is that both the engagement with Canada's socio-political reality and the rewriting of African-Canadian history are inextricably linked in the texts of the three aforementioned authors. The second basic hypothesis is that by inscribing their own autobiographical experiences or embedding their own family histories into their texts, the authors consciously blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. The thesis consists of two parts. In the first part, basic theoretical ideas and approaches are introduced and critically discussed. Theories originating from literary and cultural studies, as well as sociology, will be introduced and in the following embedded into a discourse-critical theoretical framework. In the chapters of the second part devoted to Brand's, Clarke's and Hill's literary works, this theoretical framework is then applied to the texts in order to determine their discursive functions. The text-critical part is ordered by authors, whereby their texts are discussed in chronological order. Recurring themes are taken up again in the conclusion of the thesis and discussed for their paradigmatic tendencies. Furthermore, with reference to the insights gained from the close -readings, the basic hypotheses formulated in the introduction are reconsidered. ; Die vorliegende Dissertation mit ...
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