Introduction - Writing Canadian cities - Doublas Ivison, Justin D. Edwards -- - 'An ordered absence': defeatured topologies in Canadian literature - Richard Cavell -- - 'Orient dreams': urbanity and the post-confederation literary culture of Ottawa - Steven Artelle -- - Post-colonial historicity: Halifax, region, and empire in Barometer rising and The nymph and the lamp - Christopher J. Armstrong -- - La ville en vol/city in flight: tracing lesbian e-motion through Jovette Marchessault's Comme un enfant de la terre - Barbara Godard -- - Cities and classrooms, bodies and texts: notes towards a resident reading (and teaching) of Vancouver writing - Peter Dickinson -- - Lost in the city: the Montreal novels of Régine Robin and Robert Majzels - Domenic Beneventi -- - Building and living the immigrant city: Michael Ondaatje's and Austin Clarke's Toronto - Batia Boe Stolar -- - Divided cities, divided selves: portraits of the artist as ambivalent urban hipster - Lisa Salem-Wiseman -- - Rewriting white flight: suburbia in Gerald Lynch's Troutstream and Joan Barfoot's Dancing in the dark - Paul Milton -- - Duelling and dwelling in Toronto and London: transnational urbanism in Catherine Bush's The rules of engagement - John Clement Ball -- - Epilogue - Justin D. Edwards, Douglas Ivison
"Downtown Canada is a collection of essays that addresses Canada as an urban place. The contributors focus their attention on the writing of Canada's cities - including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax - and call attention to the centrality of the city in Canadian literature. They examine how characters are affected by the urban experience in works by authors as diverse as the country itself: Hugh MacLennan, Jovette Marchessault, Michael Ondaatje, Austin Clarke, and Gerald Lynch, to name just a few. Editors Justin D. Edwards and Douglas Ivison have brought together an esteemed group of international Canadian literary scholars
Together they have created a book that is timely and unique, questioning conventional assumptions about Canadian literature, and Canadian culture more generally."--BOOK JACKET.
