Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future: Recent Generations of Canadian Women Writing

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McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, Dec 15, 2006 - Literary Collections - 330 pages
An apocalyptic vision of planetary self-destruction provided the context for many late twentieth-century narratives. Women writers from Quebec and English Canada, including Margaret Atwood, Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska, Madeleine Gagnon, Betsy Warland, Marie-Claire Blais, and Nicole Brossard, redefined their relationship to time and narrative in order to tell a different, perhaps more hopeful, story. Using "archaeology" as a trope and a methodology, Karen McPherson's "critical excavations" of these women's writings pose questions about loss and mourning, survival and witnessing, devastation and writing, remembering and imagining.

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Contents

Surviving the Century
3
1 The Language of Grief
32
2 Memory Works
58
3 Precarious Thresholds
116
4 Thinking the Future
167
5 Today and Tomorrow
205
Notes
225
Bibliography
275
Index
289
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McPherson Karen : Karen McPherson is associate professor of French, University of Oregon, president of the Conseil International d'Études Francophones, and author of Incriminations: Guilty Women/Telling Stories. Karen McPherson is associate professor of French, University of Oregon, president of the Conseil International d'Études Francophones, and author of Incriminations: Guilty Women/Telling Stories.

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