Untitled - Istituto di Storia dell'Europa Mediterranea - Cnr

2. CANADIAN STUDIES IN EUROPE:
AN OVERALL ASSESSMENT, 1955-90
This chapter must start with a prolonged caveat. 1 This is not a survey
of recent publications on Canada, nor is it a review essay or an
updated bibliography – seasoned by this writer's own personal
comments. As an historian of early North America, I would not and
should not presume to give my opinion on the state of research on
Canada in such diverse disciplines as literature, linguistics, ethnology,
sociology, political science, international relations, law, geography,
etc. Furthermore, while I am somewhat informed on events in my own
country (Italy) and in my own discipline (history), I could not possibly
have first, and even second-hand knowledge, of all that is published in
the eleven languages of the fifteen countries considered in this chapter
(Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, the
United Kingdom, Ireland, the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, France, Belgium, Israel and Italy). Once again, I cannot
list authors or titles in fields whose sophisticated methodologies I am
trained to differentiate. Yet, the sheer number of publications written
by Europeans on Canada in the past twenty years came as a surprise,
and with it the certainty that this chapter will undoubtedly overlook
important publications and innovative authors, among them colleagues
and friends.
This chapter is, therefore, a commentary on trends in Canadian
studies in the period from 1955 to 1990. It is neither organized by
discipline nor by country. Instead, it focuses on some distinctive
issues found in the European literature on Canada which was
examined. One of these issues is regionalism, a very common theme
1 Given their number, only selected publications could be mentioned. Where an
author had published extensively in the area of Canadian studies, I retained only one
or two publications. For more complete coverage, the reader is invited to make good
use of Appendix 2. Except for quotations, full references to authors and works are to
be found in Appendix 2, which includes all authors mentioned in the text. Authors
were not indexed unless they were discussed.