Radical ambivalence in Atlantic Canadian literature

Abstract

Radical Ambivalence in Atlantic Canadian Literature studies the relationship between history, aesthetics, and social discourse in the writings of Anne-Marie MacDonald, Rita Joe, George Elliott Clarke, and Alistair MacLeod. Although these writers come from vastly different cultural communities and backgrounds, their writings are all marked by the conflicted 'dual vision' of radical ambivalence. In the four chapters of this thesis, I examine the ways that MacDonald, Joe, Clarke, and MacLeod, allow a new reading of the myth of multiculturalism, the experience of assimilation, the history of Black-Canadians, and the original effects of globalization. Although some might argue that these writers form the coherent and universally recognized regionalist canon of Atlantic Canadian literature, my research shows how they strain against such classifications and effectively ''write back" against the colonial heritage of the Maritime provinces and Newfoundland (Said 3).