Literature
Canadian literature is often divided into French and English-language literature, which are rooted in the literary traditions of France and Britain, respectively. Canada’s early literature, whether written in English or French, often reflects the Canadian perspective on nature, frontier life, and Canada’s position in the world, for example the poetry of Bliss Carman or the memoirs of Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill. These themes, and Canada's literary history, inform the writing of successive generations of Canadian authors, from Leonard Cohen to Margaret Atwood.
By the mid-20th century, Canadian writers were exploring national themes for Canadian readers. Authors were trying to find a distinctly Canadian voice, rather than merely emulating British or American writers. Canadian identity is closely tied to its literature. The question of national identity recurs as a theme in much of Canada's literature, from Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes (1945) to Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief (1999). Canadian literature is often categorised by region or province; by the socio-cultural origins of the author (for example, Acadians, Aboriginal peoples, LGBT, and Irish Canadians); and by literary period, such as "Canadian postmoderns" or "Canadian Poets Between the Wars."
Canadian authors have accumulated numerous international awards. In 1992, Michael Ondaatje became the first Canadian to win the Man Booker Prize for The English Patient. Margaret Atwood won the Booker in 2000 for The Blind Assassin and Yann Martel won it in 2002 for the Life of Pi. Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries won the Governor General's Awards in Canada in 1993, the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Canada, Arts
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”
—Ezra Pound (18851972)
“A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (18641929)
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!”
—Oscar Wilde (18541900)