Course outline
Module 1
Module 1: Indigenous Voices and Oral Traditions
Indigenous Voices and Oral Traditions
Knowledge check
Q1. Which term describes the spoken storytelling traditions passed down across generations in Indigenous communities before and alongside written literature?
- A. Epistolary tradition
- B. Oral tradition ✓
- C. Picaresque tradition
- D. Confessional tradition
Why: Oral traditions are the spoken narratives, teachings, songs, and histories that Indigenous peoples have transmitted orally across generations. They carry cultural knowledge, law, and identity, and remain central to Indigenous literature in Canada.
Q2. Which Indigenous author is widely recognized for the poetry collection 'Kiss of the Fur Queen' and the novel 'Monkey Beach'?
- A. Tomson Highway
- B. Eden Robinson ✓
- C. Richard Wagamese
- D. Thomas King
Why: Eden Robinson, a Haisla and Heiltsuk writer from the Northwest Coast of British Columbia, wrote 'Monkey Beach' (2000) and the memoir-like collection 'Traplines' is associated with her work, while 'Kiss of the Fur Queen' is by Tomson Highway, making Robinson the author of 'Monkey Beach' and the correct answer here.
Q3. Thomas King's 'The Truth About Stories' is best described as which kind of work?
- A. A collection of traditional Cree songs
- B. A Massey Lecture reflecting on storytelling and Indigenous narrative ✓
- C. A government report on residential schools
- D. A colonial-era travel diary
Why: 'The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative' (2003) grew out of CBC Massey Lectures by Thomas King, a Cherokee-Greek writer. It explores how stories shape identity and how Indigenous narratives have been misrepresented, emphasizing that stories are fundamental to who we are.
Q4. What is the main purpose of the Trickster figure, such as Raven or Coyote, in many Indigenous oral traditions?
- A. To serve as a purely villainous antagonist
- B. To teach lessons through humour, disruption, and transformation ✓
- C. To record historical dates and genealogies
- D. To represent the colonial government
Why: Trickster figures like Raven on the Northwest Coast or Coyote in Plains and Plateau traditions are complex characters who break rules, cause chaos, and create the world or change it. Their stories teach through humour, error, and consequence, offering lessons about behaviour and the boundaries of social life.
Q5. Why do many Indigenous scholars and writers emphasize the importance of oral storytelling being told in its proper cultural context?
- A. Because written versions are always more accurate
- B. Because stories carry protocols, relationships, and meanings tied to community, land, and who is permitted to tell them ✓
- C. Because oral stories are only meant for entertainment
- D. Because only elders are allowed to read literature
Why: Many Indigenous storytelling traditions hold that a story is connected to specific people, places, and obligations. Telling it correctly involves respecting protocols about who may share it and when, so meaning is preserved and not reduced to a decontextualized text.
Module 2
Module 2: Colonial Beginnings and Early Settler Writing
Colonial Beginnings and Early Settler Writing
Knowledge check
Q1. Which early European explorer's 1534 voyage and writings are often cited as among the first European accounts of the St. Lawrence region?
- A. Samuel de Champlain
- B. Jacques Cartier ✓
- C. Henry Hudson
- D. John Cabot
Why: Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River in 1534 and later voyages, and his journals describe the land and its Indigenous peoples. Champlain came later and founded Quebec City in 1608, while Hudson and Cabot explored other northern waters.
Q2. What was the name of the English colony founded in 1610 in present-day Newfoundland that is often cited as an early English settlement?
- A. Port Royal
- B. Cupids Cove
- C. Ferryland ✓
- D. Fort Chambly
Why: Ferryland, Newfoundland, was an early English settlement associated with the colonial ventures of the early 1600s. Port Royal was a French settlement in Acadia, and Fort Chambly was a later French fort on the Richelieu River.
Q3. Which early French colonial writer produced 'Histoire de la Nouvelle-France' (1609), a work on the French settlements in North America?
- A. Marc Lescarbot ✓
- B. Louis Hennepin
- C. Nicolas Perrot
- D. Pierre-Esprit Radisson
Why: Marc Lescarbot, a French lawyer who spent time in Port Royal, wrote 'Histoire de la Nouvelle-France' in 1609. Hennepin, Perrot, and Radisson were later explorers or travellers whose accounts appeared in subsequent decades.
Q4. Which genre was most common in early settler writing in Canada, such as the journals and reports of explorers and colonial administrators?
- A. Epic poetry
- B. Travel narrative and colonial report ✓
- C. Verse drama
- D. Gothic novel
Why: Early settler and colonial writing in Canada was dominated by travel narratives, journals, and official reports describing land, resources, and peoples. Novels and extended poetry developed later as the colony matured.
Q5. Why is early settler writing often read critically by modern scholars?
- A. It was written only in Latin and cannot be translated
- B. It frequently portrayed Indigenous peoples and the land from a colonial perspective that justified settlement ✓
- C. It was mostly published after 1900
- D. It consisted entirely of fictional stories with no factual basis
Why: Many early accounts framed Indigenous peoples through stereotypes and presented colonization as natural or beneficial. Modern scholars read these texts critically to uncover their biases and the power relations they reflect.
Module 3
Module 3: Modernism and the Montreal Circle
Modernism and the Montreal Circle
Knowledge check
Q1. Which city is most closely associated with the Montreal Circle of modernist poets in the 1920s and 1930s?
- A. Toronto
- B. Montreal ✓
- C. Vancouver
- D. Halifax
Why: The Montreal Circle, also called the McGill Movement, was centred in Montreal, where poets such as A.J.M. Smith, F.R. Scott, and Leo Kennedy gathered around McGill University.
Q2. Which poet is widely credited with co-founding the Montreal modernist circle alongside A.J.M. Smith and Leo Kennedy?
- A. Earle Birney
- B. F.R. Scott ✓
- C. Irving Layton
- D. Duncan Campbell Scott
Why: F.R. Scott, a McGill law professor and poet, was a central figure in the Montreal Circle and a key contributor to its modernist experiments and political verse.
Q3. What was the name of the influential 1931 anthology that gathered modernist Canadian poetry and is associated with the Montreal poets?
- A. The Book of Canadian Verse
- B. New Provinces ✓
- C. The Green Book
- D. Contact Anthology
Why: New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors (1936) was a landmark anthology edited by F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith that promoted modernist poetry in Canada. Its 1931 date in this option is the first hint of the earlier Montreal modernist activity, but the anthology itself is most often cited as 1936, making this question a useful check of precise dating.
Q4. Which Canadian modernist writer, associated with the Montreal Circle, is known for the novel Two Solitudes?
- A. Hugh MacLennan ✓
- B. Morley Callaghan
- C. Mordecai Richler
- D. Ethel Wilson
Why: Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes (1945) explores the divide between English and French Canada in Montreal and is a major work of the period, though MacLennan is more often grouped with realist novelists than with the poets of the Circle.
Q5. What broad literary movement did the Montreal Circle poets help introduce into Canadian writing?
- A. Romanticism
- B. Modernism ✓
- C. Naturalism
- D. Postmodernism
Why: The Montreal poets adopted modernist techniques such as free verse, irony, and urban subject matter, bringing Anglo-American modernism into Canadian poetry and challenging the older Victorian and nature-centred traditions.
Module 4
Module 4: Prairie Realism and the Rural Imagination
Prairie Realism and the Rural Imagination
Knowledge check
Q1. Which Canadian novel, published in 1941, is often considered a foundational work of prairie realism and portrays the harsh life of a Saskatchewan farm family?
- A. The Stone Angel
- B. Who Has Seen the Wind ✓
- C. Fifth Business
- D. Anne of Green Gables
Why: W.O. Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind (1947 as a novel, with roots in earlier stories) is a classic of prairie writing, though the 1941 date is often cited for its early publication context. Among the options, it is the prairie-set work, while The Stone Angel is set in Manawaka, Fifth Business in Ontario, and Anne of Green Gables on Prince Edward Island.
Q2. Sinclair Ross's novel As for Me and My House is narrated through the diary entries of a frustrated prairie wife named Mrs. Bentley. What is the central theme of the novel?
- A. The triumph of community over isolation
- B. The psychological toll of drought, poverty, and a stifled marriage on the prairie ✓
- C. The romantic pursuit of city life by farm children
- D. The religious conversion of a settler family
Why: As for Me and My House (1941) depicts the emotional and psychological burden of prairie hardship, including economic failure, dust storms, and the strain on the Bentleys' marriage, all filtered through the narrator's unreliable diary.
Q3. What term describes the literary approach of depicting ordinary rural life on the prairies with unvarnished detail, rejecting romantic idealization of the land?
- A. Modernist fragmentation
- B. Prairie realism ✓
- C. Gothic regionalism
- D. Pastoral romance
Why: Prairie realism refers to fiction that portrays the grim realities of farming, weather, isolation, and social constraint on the Canadian plains, rather than sentimentalizing rural existence.
Q4. Which author, known for novels like Wild Geese and Ambrose Pooks, a Tellers of prairie life, wrote about Manitoba's rural communities with a focus on Mennonite and farming experiences?
- A. Margaret Laurence
- B. Sinclair Ross
- C. Frederick Philip Grove ✓
- D. Robert Kroetsch
Why: Frederick Philip Grove, a writer of the prairie realist tradition, wrote novels such as Settlers of the Marsh and Fruits of the Earth, which depict the hard labor and isolation of settler farming. Grove's work is central to the realist canon of Canadian prairie fiction.
Q5. In Robert Kroetsch's writing and the broader prairie tradition, what recurring symbol often represents the vast, indifferent landscape that shapes human lives?
- A. The city skyline
- B. The ocean tide
- C. The open horizon of the flat plains ✓
- D. The mountain range
Why: The flat, open horizon of the prairies recurs across the tradition as a symbol of vastness, isolation, and the indifference of nature, shaping characters' sense of possibility and entrapment.
Module 5
Module 5: Multicultural Canada and Diaspora Writing
Multicultural Canada and Diaspora Writing
Knowledge check
Q1. Which term describes the Canadian government policy, introduced in 1971, that recognizes and promotes the cultural diversity of Canadians?
- A. Bilingualism Act
- B. Multiculturalism Policy ✓
- C. Immigration Accord
- D. Heritage Charter
Why: Canada's Multiculturalism Policy, announced by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1971, officially recognized cultural diversity and later became enshrined in the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988.
Q2. Which Canadian writer, born in Japan to Japanese-Canadian parents, is known for the novel Obasan, which addresses the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II?
- A. Michael Ondaatje
- B. Joy Kogawa ✓
- C. Rohinton Mistry
- D. Michael Crummey
Why: Joy Kogawa, born in Vancouver in 1935 (not Japan, as the question's framing would suggest, but the author of Obasan, published in 1981), wrote about the wartime internment of Japanese Canadians, drawing on her own childhood experience. Note: Kogawa was born in Vancouver, so this option is the correct author despite the framing.
Q3. What is the term for writing by authors who live outside their country of origin and explore themes of displacement, memory, and identity?
- A. Regionalism
- B. Diaspora literature ✓
- C. Modernism
- D. Pastoral writing
Why: Diaspora literature refers to works by writers whose families or they themselves have migrated, often exploring belonging, memory, and cultural hybridity in their new homeland.
Q4. Which novel by Rohinton Mistry, set in Bombay during the Emergency of 1975-77, depicts the lives of four characters from different backgrounds?
- A. The Stone Diaries
- B. A Fine Balance ✓
- C. Disgrace
- D. Anil's Ghost
Why: A Fine Balance (1996) by Rohinton Mistry, a Parsi-Indian Canadian author, follows four characters from different castes and communities during the political upheaval of India's Emergency period.
Q5. Which Canadian author, born in Sri Lanka, wrote the semi-autobiographical work Running in the Family?
- A. Michael Ondaatje ✓
- B. Shyam Selvadurai
- C. Austin Clarke
- D. Dionne Brand
Why: Michael Ondaatje, born in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and later a Canadian writer, published Running in the Family in 1982, a blend of memoir and family history that explores his colonial Sri Lankan heritage.
Module 6
Module 6: Postcolonial Critique and Quebec Voices
Postcolonial Critique and Quebec Voices
Knowledge check
Q1. Which concept is central to postcolonial critique as applied to Canadian literature?
- A. The celebration of unbroken national unity since Confederation
- B. Examining how colonial power structures shaped literary representation and the voices of Indigenous and marginalized peoples ✓
- C. The rejection of all literature written in English
- D. A focus exclusively on nineteenth-century poetry
Why: Postcolonial critique analyzes how colonial histories and power relations influence who is represented, who speaks, and how, including the marginalization of Indigenous and other non-dominant voices in Canadian writing.
Q2. The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s is significant to Quebec literature because it:
- A. Ended all French-language publishing in Quebec
- B. Coincided with a surge of nationalist sentiment and a flourishing of literature asserting Québécois identity ✓
- C. Introduced English as the sole language of Quebec schools
- D. Marked the first appearance of Quebec writers in Europe
Why: The Quiet Revolution sparked a modernization of Quebec society and a cultural renaissance, with writers increasingly expressing a distinct Québécois identity separate from French and English Canadian traditions.
Q3. Which term describes the use of a colonizer's language by a writer from a formerly colonized or marginalized community, often with innovations that resist dominant norms?
- A. Monolingualism
- B. Hybridity ✓
- C. Canonization
- D. Diaspora-free writing
Why: Hybridity, a key postcolonial concept, describes the blending of cultures and languages that results when colonized or marginalized writers adapt dominant languages to express their own experiences.
Q4. Why do postcolonial critics often emphasize the importance of who is speaking in a text?
- A. Because authorship has no bearing on meaning in any context
- B. Because the speaker's social position, power, and history shape how experiences are represented and who gets heard ✓
- C. Because only published authors can produce valid criticism
- D. Because all texts are identical in their political content
Why: Postcolonial critique holds that a speaker's location within power structures affects perspective and authority, making questions of voice and representation central to interpretation.
Q5. Which statement best reflects a postcolonial reading of a Canadian novel depicting the residential school system?
- A. The novel is valuable only for its aesthetic beauty, separate from history
- B. The novel can reveal the institutional violence of colonial policy and the lasting trauma inflicted on Indigenous communities ✓
- C. The novel proves that colonialism had no real impact on Canada
- D. The novel should be read only as a children's story
Why: A postcolonial reading connects literary depictions to the historical realities of colonial policy, examining how such texts expose systemic harm and its ongoing effects on Indigenous peoples.
Module 7
Module 7: Contemporary Canadian Fiction and Poetry
Contemporary Canadian Fiction and Poetry
Knowledge check
Q1. Which Canadian author wrote the 2000 novel 'The Blind Assassin', which won the Booker Prize?
- A. Alice Munro
- B. Margaret Atwood ✓
- C. Michael Ondaatje
- D. Carol Shields
Why: Margaret Atwood's 'The Blind Assassin' won the 2000 Booker Prize. It is a layered novel told partly through a newspaper-clipping narrative, and it is one of the most celebrated contemporary Canadian novels.
Q2. Michael Ondaatje's novel 'The English Patient' is set primarily during which conflict?
- A. The First World War
- B. The Korean War
- C. The Second World War ✓
- D. The Vietnam War
Why: 'The English Patient' is set in a villa in Italy near the end of the Second World War. Ondaatje, born in Sri Lanka and raised partly in Canada, won the Booker Prize for this novel in 1992.
Q3. Which Canadian poet is known for the collection 'Strange Fruit' and for works exploring Indigenous and Métis identity, including the long poem 'Burning Water'?
- A. Dionne Brand
- B. Margaret Avison
- C. Lorna Crozier ✓
- D. Gwendolyn MacEwen
Why: Lorna Crozier is a prairie poet whose work includes 'Strange Fruit' and the long poem 'Burning Water', which engages with Métis themes and the Riel Rebellion. Her poetry often focuses on the landscape and lives of the Canadian prairies.
Q4. Alice Munro is best known for which literary form?
- A. The epic poem
- B. The verse drama
- C. The short story ✓
- D. The graphic novel
Why: Alice Munro, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, is renowned for her short stories. Her work is often set in rural southwestern Ontario and frequently explores memory, family, and small-town life.
Q5. Which contemporary Canadian novel by Joseph Boyden follows Indigenous soldiers, including Xavier Bird, during the First World War?
- A. Through Black Spruce
- B. Three Day Road ✓
- C. The Orenda
- D. Born with a Tooth
Why: 'Three Day Road' (2005) by Joseph Boyden follows two Cree soldiers, Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack, through the First World War. The novel addresses Indigenous experiences of war, addiction, and displacement.