Worrying the Nation

How can a national literature in English-Canada be possible if Canadians cannot agree on who we are? This is the central question that Jonathan Kertzer 'worries' over in his book, Worrying the Nation: Imagining a National Literature in English Canada. The book is a critical fretting over the possibility of a national literature when the very idea of the nation as a viable conceptual/literary category has been called into question.

Kertzer begins the book with survey of three competing discourses - literature, nation, and history - and how they converge and diverge. He then examines Herder's and Hegel's legacy of romantic historicism as it has affected Canadian literature. To illustrate his worry over national literature, he presents an analysis of some flawed attempts at poetic nation-building, specifically in Oliver Goldsmith's The Rising Village, E.J. Pratt's Towards the Last Spike, and Dennis Lee's Civil Elegies. In addition to these examples, Kertzer shows that alternative models of sociability are presented in the recent fiction of Joy Kogawa and Daphne Marlatt.

Worrying the Nation is very much a tract for these turbulent times. Jonathan Kertzer has produced a highly sophisticated analysis of Canadian literary writing and its role in national culture.