Madness in English-Canadian Fiction - ub-dok - Universität Trier

madness provide an informing principle in terms of certain Canadian experiences and
perceptions. By examining madness as it represents itself in Canadian literature and
considering the respective explorations of the deranged mind within their historical
context, I hope to demonstrate that literary interpretations of madness both reflect and
question cultural, political, religious and psychological assumptions of their times and
that certain symptoms or usages are characteristic of certain periods. Such an approach,
it is hoped, might not only contribute towards an assessment of the wealth of
associations which surround madness and the ambivalence with which it is viewed,
but also shed some light on the Canadian imagination. As such this study can be
considered not only as a history of literary madness, but a history of Canadian society
and the Canadian mind. It should be noted, however, that I deliberately refuse to
discuss madness solely on the grounds of Canadian identity and aspects of excentricity
and marginality, which seems to be so en vogue these days, as it would not do justice
to the overall variety of works dealing with madness.
A point which can nevertheless be made is that, due to its post-colonial situation and
the corresponding identity crisis and specific geophysical aspects, such as its vastness
and dangerous climate, which as part of the Canadian experience has entered its
literature, compared to other countries or even post-colonial nations, Canadian
literature lends itself to an even greater variety of situations in which to discuss the
theme of madness. While Canadian writers in their literary depiction of madness, as
the subsequent discussion will hopefully show, can be said to be firmly rooted within
western thought tradition, it is with regard to the latter themes that they have come to
appropriate this philosophical background for their own purposes.
To achieve my above mentioned aim I will proceed in an essentially combined
thematic-chronological manner. I find this approach most effective in treating
madness as a continuous subject of literature and necessary for the elucidation of
developments and changes in aesthetic approaches to the manifestations of madness
and their presentations from the inception of English-Canadian fiction to the present.
Starting out with a brief history of the way madness has been perceived in western
culture, I will then examine the various narratives for their engagement with and
responses to specific discourses of madness (e.g. Romanticism, popularised
Freudianism, antipsychiatry, feminism, poststructuralism, etc.) that have worked
subtly and overtly to reinforce certain images.
As this study is basically organized with regard to chronological aspects Chapter 3 will
deal with the colonial situation of the country and such early works as the journals of
Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill, which in our context assume great
documentary interest, and Major John Richardson's gothic, historical novel Wacousta
which can be regarded as the first major Canadian prose work to dramatise the
unresolved tensions of colonial conflict, just as it problematises the whole notion of a
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