Merging selected approaches to Comparative North American Studies with detailed textual analyses, this book studies works of writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien, and Margaret Atwood. Topics include comparative approaches to the North American modernist short story, narratives of the Canada-US border, and North American reviews of Atwood's novels.

A collection of new essays on the multi-talented Canadian writerMargaret Atwood. Novelist, poet, cultural critic, Margaret Atwood is one of the most fascinating, versatile, and productive authors of our time, a superb writer in any genre she chooses to tackle. This book was prepared on the occasion of Atwood's sixtieth birthday in November 1999. Its first aim is therefore to take stock of Atwood's multifarious works and international impact at the height of her creative powers. Secondly, the book serves as a wide-ranging introduction to the writer and her works. Fifteen informative articles written specifically for this volume by Atwood specialists from Canada, the USA, the UK, Germany, and France treat her life and status, her works (up-to-date surveyarticles on Atwood's novels, short fiction, poetry, and literary and cultural criticism), and important approaches to her works (from the standpoints of gender politics, mythology, ecology, popular culture, constructivism, and Canadian nationalism). A final section on creativity, transmission, and reception includes an interview with Atwood on creativity, statements by some of Atwood's important transmitters, including publishers, editors, literaryagents, and translators, and some 15 statements by Atwood's fellow writers, in which they explore her importance for them. A number of photographs of Atwood, several cartoonsdrawn by and about her, an up-to-date bibliography ofworks by and about her, and an index round out the volume. Reingard M. Nischik is Professor of American literature at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

The first anthology of critical interpretations of major Canadian short stories. Beginning in the 1890s, reaching its first full realization by modernist writers in the 1920s, and brought to its heyday during the Canadian Renaissance starting in the 1960s, the short story has become Canada's flagship genre. Itcontinues to attract the country's most accomplished and innovative writers today, among them Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Clark Blaise, and many others. Yet in contrast to the stature and popularity of the genreand the writers who partake in it, surprisingly little literary criticism has been devoted to the Canadian short story. This book redresses that imbalance by providing the first collection of critical interpretations of thirty well-known and often-anthologized Canadian short stories from the genre's beginnings through the twentieth century. A historical survey of the genre introduces the volume and a timeline comparing the genre's development in Canada, the US, and Great Britain completes it. Geared both to specialists in and students of Canadian literature, the volume is of particular benefit to the latter because it provides not only a collection of interpretations, but a comprehensive introduction to the history of the Canadian short story. Contributors: Reingard M. Nischik, Martina Seifert, Heinz Antor, Julia Breitbach, Konrad Gross, Paul Goetsch, Dieter Meindl, Nina Kuck, Stefan Ferguson, Rudolf Bader, Fabienne C. Quennet, Martin Kuester, Jutta Zimmermann, Sylvia Mergenthal, Caroline Rosenthal, Wolfgang Klooss, Lothar Hoennighausen, Heinz Ickstadt, Heinz Ickstadt, Gordon Boelling, Christina Strobel, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz, Nadja Gernalzick, Eva Gruber, Brigitte Glaser, Georgiana Banita. Reingard M. Nischik is Professor of American Literature at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

The development of literature in Canada with an eye to its multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual nature. From modest colonial beginnings, literature in Canada has arrived at the center stage of world literature. Works by English-Canadian writers -- both established writers such as Margaret Atwood and new talents such as Yann Martel -- make regular appearances on international bestseller lists. French-Canadian literature has also found its own voice in the North American and francophone worlds. "CanLit" has likewise developed into a staple of academic interest, pursued in Canadian Studies programs in Canada and around the world. This volume draws on the expertise of scholars from Canada, Germany, Austria, and France, tracing Canadian literature from the indigenous oral tradition to thedevelopment of English-Canadian and French-Canadian literature since colonial times. Conceiving of Canada as a single but multifaceted culture, it accounts for specific characteristics of English- and French-Canadian literatures,such as the vital role of the short story in English Canada or that of the chanson in French Canada. Yet special attention is also paid to Aboriginal literature and to the pronounced transcultural, ethnically diverse character ofmuch contemporary Canadian literature, thus moving clearly beyond the traditions of the two founding nations. Contributors: Reingard M. Nischik, Eva Gruber, Iain M. Higgins, Guy Lafleche, Dorothee Scholl, Gwendolyn Davies, Tracy Ware, Fritz Peter Kirsch, Julia Breitbach, Lorraine York, Marta Dvorak, Jerry Wasserman, Ursula Mathis-Moser, Doris G. Eibl, Rolf Lohse, Sherrill Grace, Caroline Rosenthal, Martin Kuester, Nicholas Bradley, Anne Nothof, Georgiana Banita, Gilles Dupuis, and Andrea Oberhuber. Reingard M. Nischik is Professor of American Literature at the University of Constance, Germany.

Winner of the 2010 Margaret Atwood Society Best Book Prize.

In "Engendering Genre," renowned Margaret Atwood scholar Reingard M. Nischik analyzes the relationship between gender and genre in Atwood's works. She approaches Atwood's oeuvre by genre - poetry, short fiction, novels, criticism, comics, and film - and examines them individually. She explores how Atwood has developed her genres to be gender-sensitive in both content and form and argues that gender and genre are inherently complicit in Atwood's work: they converge to critique the gender-biased designs of traditional genres. This combination of gender and genre results in the recognizable Atwoodian style that shakes and extends the boundaries of conventional genres and explores them in new ways.

The book includes the first in-depth treatment of Atwood's cartoon art as well as the first survey of her involvement with film, and concludes with an interview with Margaret Atwood on her career "From Survivalwoman to Literary Icon."

In the last thirty years of the twentieth century, Canadian federal governments offered varying degrees of support for literary and other artistic endeavour. A corollary of this patronage of culture at home was an effort to make the resulting works available for audiences elsewhere in the world. Current developments in the study of translation and its influence as cultural transfer have made possible new assessments of such efforts to project a national image abroad."Translating Canada" examines cultural materials exported by Canada in addition to those selected for acquisition by German publishers, theatres, and other culture brokers. It also considers the motivations of particular translators and the reception by German reviewers of works by a wide variety of Canadian writers -- novelists and poets, playwrights and children's authors, literary and social critics. Above all, the book maps for its readers a number of significant, though frequently unsuspected, roles that translation assumes in the intercultural negotiation of national images and values.The chapters in this collection will be of value to students, teachers, and scholars in a number of fields. Informed lay readers, too, will appreciate the authors' insights into the different ways in which translation has contributed to German reception of Canadian books and culture.

In 2013, the Nobel Prize for Literature was for the first time awarded to a short story writer, and to a Canadian, Alice Munro. The award focused international attention on a genre that had long been thriving in Canada, particularly since the 1960s. This book traces the development and highlights of the Canadian short story from the late 19th century up to the present. The history and stylistic approaches of the genre are covered, with in-depth examination of exemplary stories by prominent authors.