A bibliographical index and critical history of 'Open Letter'.

摘要

This dissertation approaches the Canadian literary periodical Open Letter from both a bibliographical and a critical perspective. The primary, bibliographical research consists of indexing every issue of Open Letter and providing a searchable, online database for scholarly research. While both the Canadian Periodical Index (CPI) and the Canadian Business and Current Affairs index (CBCA) cite Open Letter contents beginning with the 1990s, this project indexes the twenty-five years of publication prior to 1990 and offers complete coverage. The index cross-references theoretical and thematic content, individual names of authors, texts and subjects as well as dates, issues and forms of publication. In the critical chapters included here, I have two objectives: first, I describe the methodology of the bibliographical research and its implications for literary scholarship. To contextualize the journal, I argue that Open Letter represents a research forum which challenges literary investigation both textually and institutionally. I begin by discussing the journal's development out of TISH during the early 1960s and the American influence of the Black Mountain school. By focussing on poetic form and nationalism, I examine how the dominant Canadian literary institution received the poetics of TISH and the early Open Letter. Concomitant with this discussion is an analysis of the debate between Robert Lecker and Frank Davey over the canonization of Canadian literature and criticism. In deconstructing the debate's reliance on binary constructions of public-private, academic-poetic, dominant-minor and modern-postmodern, I explore the contradictory impulses of academic criticism as it attempts to transcend those binaries. Since the journal has shifted its focus over the years, I cite archival materials from Simon Fraser University to describe how Open Letter established and promoted itself in the changing literary scene. I conclude by suggesting that the journal practices what postmodern theorists such as Linda Hutcheon and Fredric Jameson describe, namely a forum which paradoxically unites disparate and dissonant voices to enact an alternative mode of social discourse.