ENGL 4253 X2

ENGL 4253/5913 X2*
Family Drama! Discourses of Inheritance in the Modern Canadian Novel
Winter Term: MA-Honours Blended Seminar
Instructor:  Dr. Kait Pinder

This course studies the provocative discourses of inheritance that inform the modern novel in Canada and arise out of it. In particular, students will examine how representations of heredity and inheritance intersect with questions of
immigration and race, theories of property and nation-building, twentieth-century philosophies of time, and the tensions between cosmopolitan literary influences (realism, naturalism, modernism, the avant-garde) and the development of literary traditions specific to Canada. Our discussions will focus not only on understanding how writers of the period understood competing discourses of inheritance, but also how the questions raised about inheritance in the early and mid-twentieth century require literary scholars to rethink assumptions about the defining features of the novel genre.