| The Picturesque and the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape Contributor(s): Glickman, Susan (Author) |
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ISBN: 0773517324 ISBN-13: 9780773517325 Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press OUR PRICE: $108.90 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: July 1998 Annotation: The Picturesque and the Sublime is a literary history of two hundred years of nature writing in Canada, from eighteenth century prospect poems to contemporary encounters with landscape. Arguing against the received wisdom (made popular by Northrop Frye and Margaret Atwood) that Canadian writers view nature as hostile, Susan Glickman places Canadian literature in the English and European traditions of the sublime and the picturesque. Glickman argues that early immigrants to Canada brought with them the expectation that nature would be grand, mysterious, awesome -- even terrifying -- and welcomed scenes that conformed to these notions of sublimity. She contends that to interpret their descriptions of nature as "negative", as so many critics have done, is a significant misunderstanding. Glickman provides close readings of several important works, including Susanna Moodie's "Enthusiasm" Charles G.D. Roberts's Ave, and Paulette Jiles's "Song to the Rising Sun", and explores the poems in the context of theories of nature and art. Instead of projecting backward from a modernist perspective, Glickman reads forward from the discovery of landscape as a legitimate artistic subject in seventeenth century England and argues that picturesque modes of description, and a sublime aesthetic, have governed much of the representation of nature in this country. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Canadian - Literary Criticism | Poetry |
| Dewey: 811.009 |
| LCCN: 00503354 |
| Physical Information: 0.78" H x 6.6" W x 9.3" (1.15 lbs) 1 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Canadian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Glickman argues that early immigrants to Canada brought with them the expectation that nature would be grand, mysterious, awesome - even terrifying - and welcomed scenes that conformed to these notions of sublimity. She contends that to interpret their descriptions of nature as negative, as so many critics have done, is a significant misunderstanding. Glickman provides close readings of several important works, including Susanna Moodie's Enthusiasm, Charles G.D. Roberts's Ave, and Paulette Jiles's Song to the Rising Sun, and explores the poems in the context of theories of nature and art. Instead of projecting backward from a modernist perspective, Glickman reads forward from the discovery of landscape as a legitimate artistic subject in seventeenth-century England and argues that picturesque modes of description, and a sublime aesthetic, have governed much of the representation of nature in this country. |