The "Imperial Idea" In Early Canada

Sara Jeannette Duncan(1861—1922)was one of the liveliest voice at the turn of the 20 th century.Her novel The Imperialist(1904),dealing primarily with“imperialism”,one of the main themes of Canadian nationality,is a sophisticated epitome of Canadian society that most authentic to Canadian social and political life at the turn of the twentieth century.The novel presents Canada after the Confederation being divided into two groups in regard to the issue of nation-building.One faction is the “imperialists” who advocate closer ties with the British Empire;the counterpart supports a middle course to maintain a perilous triangle between Great Britain and the United States.As one of the major protagonists in the novel,Lorne Murchison is a typical imperialist runs for a liberal candidate that propagandizes the “imperial idea”in a by-election in Ontario.Though he failed due to his idealism,he was portrayed as a typical representative of a young generation of Canadians who courageously pursued political vision and envisagement of the making of a nation.This thesis aims to explore the “imperialism” as an early ideological form of Canadian Nationalism and the representation of historical-cultural context by analyzing the intertextuality of the “historicity of texts” as well as the “textuality of history” in The Imperialist from a New Historicist perspective.By employing the concept of “anecdote” and “thick description” to further investigating the circulation between literary text and non-literary text,the thesis also attempts to reveal how literary text and historical-cultural context negotiate,circulate and construct each other.Ever since the New Historicism(the Poetics of Culture)movement emerged in academia in the 1980 s,with an emphasis on dynamic and productive representation and intertextuality between literature and history,it has contested the boundaries of traditional historiography and literary criticism.New Historicism,through the periodsof Deconstruction,Post-Structuralism,Marxist criticism,and Cultural Materialism,calls for a historical turn in literary criticism and focuses on the way in which social forces produce such boundaries between text and reality,or history and culture.The Imperialist,as a product of a certain historical context in Canada,incorporated historical reality and fictional imagination,presenting an uncertainty and perplexity of Canadians at the turn of the twentieth century.The novel has unfolded an awareness of nationhood as a young country under the intertwined historical and literary context.