Southern Ontario Gothic
Southern Ontario Gothic is a
Overview
The term was first used in Graeme Gibson's Eleven Canadian Novelists (1972) to recognize an existing tendency to apply aspects of the Gothic novel to writing based in and around Southern Ontario.[1] In an interview with Timothy Findley, Gibson commented that Findley's novel The Last of the Crazy People shared similarities with the American Southern Gothic genre, to which Findley replied, "...sure, it's Southern Gothic: Southern Ontario Gothic."[2]
Notable writers of this subgenre include Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Jane Urquhart, Marian Engel, James Reaney, and Barbara Gowdy.[3]
Characteristics
Like the Southern Gothic of American writers such as
Often, these elements are combined to highlight themes present in the wider canon of Canadian literature. An overarching sense of displacement either socially, physically or psychologically often sets the stage for supernatural elements, transgressive behavior or inner turmoil.[7] Accompanying displacement is a nightmarish feeling of spiritual imprisonment in a Southern Ontario setting that is characterized by an eroding societal value system and an atmosphere that stifles and fears individual means of expression.[8] Many sources of terror and horror are created when a character tries to break free of the strictures of established norms within these communities.[9] This lends itself to a motif of 'Canadian' survival that is applied to scenarios dependent on enduring abstract horrors which originate from within a character who is often living in a small village, town or city of the region.[10] In a review of Cynthia Sugars' book Canadian Gothic: Literature, History and the Spectre of Self-Invention, Amy Ransom claims that Southern Ontario Gothic seeks to tell the stories of generations of settlers in a way that uses elements of the taboo, the surreal and the fantastical to form a new common identity in a postcolonial world.[11] For example, the family of prolific Southern Ontario Gothic author, Alice Munro, originally settled on Huron lands which were a basis of many of her shorter works.[12] Writer David Ingham, in contrast, critiques Southern Ontario Gothic as having "little or nothing to distinguish it from everyday, garden-variety type realism."[13] Likewise, critics like Gerry Turcotte, Greg Loannou, and Lynne Missen, have questioned the presence of truly gothic supernatural elements in Canadian literature.[14]
Postcolonial perspective
A key feature of Southern Ontario Gothic is its reckoning with the region’s history of colonization. Often gothic elements like the uncanny, supernatural, and hauntings are used to reinvigorate memories of past traumas that have been covered up with revisionist history.[15] Regional gothic literature, such as Southern Ontario Gothic, makes allusions to specific places through landmarks, architecture, vernacular, etc. This is distinct from other forms of Gothic that are set in arbitrarily chosen places. Because colonization is a necessarily geographic endeavor, this aspect is particularly important to Southern Ontario Gothic which tends to indicate a specific location that has been colonized and is now haunted by the remnants of its past.[15] The conflict between colonial settlers and the Canadian wild is also an important aspect of Southern Ontario Gothic. In the early stories of Canadian Gothic, the decaying abandoned castles of traditional Gothic literature were substituted with the uninhabited Canadian wild.[16] In this setting, white settlers are haunted by the land they have stolen and are in a constant battle to preserve their sense of “civilization” in the wild.[17]
Notable works
Notable works of the genre include Davies'
See also
- United Empire Loyalists
References
- ^ a b The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. 1997. Don Mills: Oxford University Press Canada, p.1085.
- ^ Gibson, Graeme. Eleven Canadian Novelists. 1973. Toronto: The House of Anansi Press. 138.
- ^ The Porcupine's Quill. "The Porcupine's Quill | Book Listing | the Box Social & Other Stories". Archived from the original on 2013-07-31. Retrieved 2013-01-27. The Box Social and Other Stories. Retrieved on January 27, 2013.
- ^ Fraser, J. Lynn. May 2007. 'Whiteoaks of Jalna'. CM : an Electronic Reviewing Journal of Canadian Materials for Young People, 13.19. Retrieved June 16, 2009, from CBCA Reference database. (Document ID: 1275281041)
- ^ "Dear Life by Alice Munro". Quill & Quire, November 2012.
- ^ Andrews, Jennifer. 2001. 'Native Canadian gothic refigured: Reading Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach'. Essays on Canadian Writing,(73), 1-24. Retrieved June 16, 2009, from CBCA Reference database. (Document ID: 76040741).
- ^ Bode, R., Clement, L. D., & Bode, R. (2015). L.M. montgomery's rainbow valleys: The Ontario years, 1911-1961. Montréal, CA: McGill-Queen's University Press.
- ^ Andrews, J. (2001). Native canadian gothic refigured: Reading eden robinson's monkey beach. Essays on Canadian Writing, (73), 1-24.
- ^ Belyea, Andrew D. Redefining the Real: Gothic Realism in Alice Munro's "Friend of My Youth", ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1998.
- ^ Berndt, Katrin. "“The Ordinary Terrors of Survival: Alice Munro and the Canadian Gothic”." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 370, Gale, 2015. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1100118829/LitRC?u=lond95336&sid=LitRC&xid=d1fb0715. Accessed 27 May 2018.
- ^ Ransom, Amy J. "Sugars, Cynthia. Canadian Gothic: Literature, History and the Spectre of Self-Invention." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 26, no. 1, 2015, p. 195+. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531845668/AONE?u=lond95336&sid=AONE&xid=0a7f7a80.
- ^ Bentley, D. M. R. (1993). The borders of nightmare: The fiction of john richardson by michael hurley, and: The canadian brothers; or, the prophecy fulfilled. A tale of the late american war by john richardson (review). University of Toronto Quarterly, 63(1), 211-214.
- ^ Ingham, David. "Bashing the Fascists: The Moral Dimensions of Findley's Fiction". Studies in Canadian Literature. Retrieved on December 3, 2007.
- ISBN 978-0-7766-2141-8.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-55458-294-5, retrieved 2024-04-21
- ISBN 978-1-134-15103-5.
- ISSN 0272-2011.