Acquire Today Major Canadian Authors: A Critical Introduction To Canadian Literature In English Formulated By David Stouck Issued As Ebook

is a really useful book if you want to get into older CanLit i, e "classic" Canadian literature.

It doesn't really show it's age aboutyears, printed inuntil the last chapter, "Conclusion" when it makes overarching comments about the state "current" CanLit.
The reason it is not too dated is because it is not really about Canadian literature like Survival by M, Atwood but the individual writers that make up it from precolonial tos,

Stouck has arranged the authors chronologically as well as their works mentioned inside those chapters which helps illustrate the evolution of CanLit as well as that author's development.
My only qualm is that there is a mix of prose writers and poets some are both as it is kinda jarring as the movements developed a little differently from each other in CanLit if the Conclusion is to be believed.
I would've like them to be separated, And also, I have little interest in poetry but I still read those, they weren't totally boring,

I really enjoyed the minicritiques of a few seminal works of each author as they were concise and informative, While some may decry some omissions of authors there's an little end chapter that lists other CanLit authors and attaches a few sentences along with a recommended titles, Stuock's spotlight choices seem like a good introduction to CanLit.
He mentions Haliburton, E. J Pratt, Susanna Moodie, Irving Layton, Ethel Wilson, Robertson Davies, Gabrielle Roy, Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, etc,


disclaimer: I'm no expert in CanLit, a newbie really, Take with grain of salt, Also, I think this book is out of print This is why libraries are cool, borrowing old stuff, :P This really is an introductory work if you know anything about these writers, you probably won't get anything out of reading the short biocritiques.
If

you don't know anything about the writers, you would be just as well off reading the headnotes in an anthology of Canadian literature.


Stouck's style is to mention that a novel is a quest story or something like that, spoil the plot, and give it either or , unconvincingly in either case.
With poets, he loads the page with quotations,

Why is so much CanLit scholarship so sluggish, overwhelmed, thoughtless Canadian literature in English presents a wealth of imaginative experience that belies the colonial status sometimes accorded the worlds secondlargest country.
This revised and expanded edition of Major Canadian Authors provides an entrance into that realm, Stoucks carefully integrated essays introduce the life and writings of eighteen foremost Canadian authors, including Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence, Sinclair Ross, and Alice Munro.
The second edition adds a new chapter on Margaret Atwood, updates the text, and expands the reference guide to include more than sixty Canadian authors.
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