1st Edition

Literature and the Glocal City Reshaping the English Canadian Imaginary

Edited By Ana María Fraile-Marcos Copyright 2014
    212 Pages
    by Routledge

    212 Pages
    by Routledge

    The modern city is a space that can simultaneously represent the principles of its homeland alongside its own unique blend of the cultures that intermingle within its city limits.





    This book makes an intervention in Canadian literary criticism by foregrounding both ‘globalism,’ which is increasingly perceived as the state-of-the-art literary paradigm, and the city. These are two significant axes of contemporary culture and identity that were previously disregarded by a critical tradition built around the importance of space and place in Canadian writing. Yet, as relevant as the turn to the city and to globalism may be, this collection’s most notable contribution lies in linking the notion of ‘glocality’, that is, the intermeshing of local and global forces to representations of subjectivity in the material and figurative space of the Canadian city. Dealing with oppositional discourses as multiculturalism, postcolonialism, feminism, diaspora, and environmentalism this book is an essential reference for any scholar with an interest in these areas.

    Introduction: Urban Glocality and the English Canadian Imaginary  Ana María Fraile-Marcos  1. Mobility and its Disenchantments in Marie Clements’ The Unnatural and Accidental Women and Burning Vision  Deena Rymhs  2. Embodying the Glocal: Immigrant and Indigenous Ideas of Home in Tessa McWatt’s Montreal  Michèle Lacombe  3. From Rowanwood to Downtown: The Torontonians and Girls Fall Down  Coral Ann Howells  4. Dystopic Urbanites: Civilian Cyborgs in TransCanadian Speculative Fictions  Belén Martín-Lucas  5. The Intrinsic Potential of Glassness: Narcissistic, Opaque, Organic Modes of Signifying the Urban in Vancouver  Eva Darias-Beautell  6. The Refugee as Signifier in the Semiotics of the Glocal City: Michael Helm’s Cities of Refuge  Ana María Fraile-Marcos  7. Responding to Late Capitalism: The Mall  Kit Dobson  8. Hipster Urbanism and Glocal Toronto  Brandon McFarlane  9. Glocalization and Neoliberalism in Michael Winter’s The Architects Are Here  Herb Wylie  10. Ian Fleming’s Canadian Cities  George Elliott Clarke

    Biography

    Ana María Fraile-Marcos is Associate Professor of English at the University of Salamanca, Spain