Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Book reviews - Judit Ágnes Kádár: Canada and the Millenium—Proceedings of the 2nd Canadian Studies Conference in Central Europe. Editor: Anna Jakabfi
addition to Staines's critical survey that appeared in his 1995 book entitled Beyond the Provinces: Literary Canada at Century's End. The collection includes papers on two specific traditional Canadian research interests, reflecting a broad national intellectual excitement, too: landscape and nationalism in literature. Victor Kennedy's essay entitled "Metaphor and Metalandscape of Nationalism in Contemporary Canadian Writing" differentiates Canadians' critical understanding of Canadianness írom that of the Europeans' and calls attention to the need to recognize patterns of romantic idealism, provincialism and colonialism in literature as well as in other public intellectual discourses. The writer argues that irony in literature proves to be a powerful means of challenging negative tendencies in national image and identity formulation. Donn Kushner explores how "kidlit" advocates human rights, with special regards to patterns of victimization in Canadian children's literature and society. A different literary approach to human rights is Anna Olos's partly post-communist perspective of Findley's fiction. A further essay dealing with human rights focuses on a contemporary topic: Internet-related social and legal issues. András György Tóth's formally somewhat different paper that presents a case study of the 1998 Ice Storm disaster and its coverage on the "privileged tool," i.e. the internet. The writer argues that websites operating at the time of the natural disaster provided not only a technical facility as a medium of aid, consolidation and encouragement for the victims, but also supplied a precious opportunity for the collective exchange of ideas as well as it presented the power of individual initiative in time of need. A rather popular current research interest in discourse analysis is reflected in the collection as well. Eva Kusher calls attention to monological and dialogical discourses in French and English poetry with a wide array of examples, while Éva Martonyi focuses on the literary phenomena of Quebec Francophone literary avant-garde and postmodernism. As for other literary genres, Szabolcs Szilágyi's paper compares the text and performance versions of a drama by Alun Hibbert, attempting to re-evaluate the artistic merits of the text in view of the actual performance participants of the Seregélyes Conference enjoyed. However, other significant thematic interests in contemporary literary criticism, like the discussion of the female discourse of writing, are also represented in the selection. Three 219
