Benjamin Lefebvre | Wilfrid Laurier University (original) (raw)

Books by Benjamin Lefebvre

University of Toronto Press, Dec 2015

This final volume of /The L.M. Montgomery Reader/ examines a long overlooked portion of Montgomer... more This final volume of /The L.M. Montgomery Reader/ examines a long overlooked portion of Montgomery’s critical reception: reviews of her books. Although Montgomery downplayed the impact that reviews had on her writing career, claiming to be amused and tolerant of reviewers’ contradictory opinions about her work, she nevertheless cared enough to keep a large percentage of them in scrapbooks as an archive of her career.

Edited by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre, this volume presents 370 reviews from eight countries that raise questions about and offer reflections on gender, genre, setting, character, audience, and nationalism, much of which anticipated the scholarship that has thrived in the last four decades. Lefebvre’s extended introduction and chapter headnotes place the reviews in the context of Montgomery’s literary career and trace the evolution of attitudes to her work, and his epilogue examines the response to her books, letters, journals, and other writings that were published posthumously.

A comprehensive account of the reception of Montgomery’s books, published during and after her lifetime, /A Legacy in Review/ completes this important new resource for L.M. Montgomery scholars and fans around the world.

Following on the heels of the first volume of /The L.M. Montgomery Reader/, this second volume na... more Following on the heels of the first volume of /The L.M. Montgomery Reader/, this second volume narrates the development of L.M. Montgomery’s critical reputation in the seventy years since her death in 1942. Edited by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre, it traces milestones and turning points such as adaptations for stage and screen, posthumous publications, and the development of Montgomery Studies as a scholarly field. Lefebvre’s introduction also considers Montgomery’s publishing history in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom at a time when her work remained in print not because it was considered part of a university canon of literature, but simply due to the continued interest of readers.

The twenty samples of Montgomery scholarship included in this volume broach topics such as gender and genre, narrative strategies in fiction and life writing, translation, and Montgomery’s archival papers. They reflect shifts in Montgomery's critical reputation decade by decade: the 1960s, when a milestone chapter on Montgomery coincided with a second wave of texts seeking to create a canon of Canadian literature; the 1970s, in the midst of a sustained reassessment of popular fiction and of literature by women; the 1980s, when the publication of Montgomery’s life writing, which coincided with the broadcast of critically acclaimed television productions adapted from her fiction, radically altered how readers perceived her and her work; the 1990s, when a conference series on Montgomery began to generate a sustained amount of scholarship; and the opening years of the twenty-first century, when the field of Montgomery Studies became both international and interdisciplinary.

This is the first book to consider the posthumous life of one of Canada's most enduringly popular authors.

/The L.M. Montgomery Reader/ assembles significant primary material on one of Canada’s most endur... more /The L.M. Montgomery Reader/ assembles significant primary material on one of Canada’s most enduringly popular authors throughout her high-profile career and after her death. Each of its three volumes gathers pieces published all over the world to set the stage for a much-needed reassessment of Montgomery’s literary reputation. Much of the material is freshly unearthed from archives and digital collections and has never before been collected in book form.

The selections appearing in this first volume focus on Montgomery’s role as a public celebrity and as the author of the resoundingly successful /Anne of Green Gables/ (1908). They give a strong impression of her as a writer and cultural critic as she discusses a range of topics with wit, wisdom, and humour, including the natural landscape of Prince Edward Island, her wide readership, anxieties about modernity, and the continued relevance of “old ideals.” These essays and interviews are augmented by additional pieces that discuss her work’s literary and cultural value in relation to an emerging canon of Canadian literature.

Each volume is accompanied by an extensive introduction and detailed commentary by leading Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre that trace the interplay between the author and the critic, as well as between the private and public Montgomery. This volume – and the /Reader/ as a whole – adds tremendously to our understanding and appreciation of Montgomery’s legacy as a Canadian author and as a literary celebrity both during and beyond her lifetime.

This book offers new critical approaches for the study of adaptations, abridgments, translations,... more This book offers new critical approaches for the study of adaptations, abridgments, translations, parodies, and mash-ups that occur internationally in contemporary children’s culture. It follows recent shifts in adaptation studies that call for a move beyond fidelity criticism, a paradigm that measures the success of an adaptation by the level of fidelity to the “original” text, toward a methodology that considers the adaptation to be always already in conversation with the adapted text. This book visits children’s literature and culture in order to consider the generic, pedagogical, and ideological underpinnings that drive both the process and the product. Focusing on novels as well as folktales, films, graphic novels, and anime, the authors consider the challenges inherent in transforming the work of authors such as William Shakespeare, Charles Perrault, L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and A.A. Milne into new forms that are palatable for later audiences particularly when—for perceived ideological or political reasons—the textual transformation is not only unavoidable but entirely necessary. Contributors consider the challenges inherent in transforming stories and characters from one type of text to another, across genres, languages, and time, offering a range of new models that will inform future scholarship.

First published in 1921, /Rilla of Ingleside/ – originally written as the final sequel to /Anne o... more First published in 1921, /Rilla of Ingleside/ – originally written as the final sequel to /Anne of Green Gables/ – is one of the only contemporary depictions in Canadian fiction of women on the home front during the First World War. Focusing on Rilla Blythe, the pretty and high-spirited youngest daughter of Anne Shirley, the novel paints a vivid and compelling picture of the women who battled to keep the home fires burning throughout those tumultuous years. Using her own wartime experience and imagination, Montgomery recreates the laughter and grief, poignancy and suspense, struggles and courage of Canadian women at war.

This special gift edition includes Montgomery’s complete, restored, and unabridged original text as well as a thoughtful introduction from the editors, a detailed glossary, maps of Europe during the war, and war poems by L.M. Montgomery and her contemporary Virna Sheard.

"The recent 100-year anniversary of the first publication of L.M. Montgomery’s /Anne of Green Gab... more "The recent 100-year anniversary of the first publication of L.M. Montgomery’s /Anne of Green Gables/ has inspired renewed interest in one of Canada’s most beloved fictional icons. The international appeal of the red-haired orphan has not diminished over the past century, and the cultural meaning of her story continues to grow and change. The original essays in /Anne’s World/ offer fresh and timely approaches to issues of culture, identity, health, and globalization as they apply to Montgomery’s famous character and to today’s readers.

In conversation with each other and with the work of previous experts, the contributors to /Anne’s World/ discuss topics as diverse as Anne in fashion, the global industry surrounding Anne, the novel’s use as a tool to counteract depression, and the possibility that Anne suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Anne in translation and its adaptation for film and television are also considered. By establishing new ways to examine one of popular culture’s favourite characters, the essays of /Anne’s World/ demonstrate the timeless and ongoing appeal of L.M. Montgomery’s writing."

"Adultery, illegitimacy, revenge, murder, and death – these are not the first terms we associate ... more "Adultery, illegitimacy, revenge, murder, and death – these are not the first terms we associate with L.M. Montgomery. But in /The Blythes Are Quoted/, completed at the end of her life, the author brings topics such as these to the fore.

Intended by Montgomery to be the ninth volume in her bestselling series featuring Anne Shirley Blythe, /The Blythes Are Quoted/ takes Anne and her family a full two decades beyond anything else she published about them, and some of its subject matter is darker than we might expect.

Divided into two sections, one set before and one after the Great War of 1914–1918, it contains fifteen short stories set in and around the Blythes’ Prince Edward Island community of Glen St. Mary. Binding these stories are sketches featuring Anne and Gilbert Blythe discussing poems by Anne and their middle son, Walter, who dies as a soldier in the war. By blending together poetry, prose, and dialogue in this way, Montgomery was at the end of her career experimenting with storytelling methods in an entirely new manner.

This publication of Montgomery’s rediscovered original work – previously published only in severely abridged form as /The Road to Yesterday/ – invites readers to return to her earlier books with a renewed appreciation and perspective."

Early Canadian Literature Series by Benjamin Lefebvre

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2016

First published in 1947, In Due Season broke new ground with its fictional representation of wome... more First published in 1947, In Due Season broke new ground with its fictional representation of women and of Indigenous people. Set during the dustbowl 1930s, this tersely narrated prize-winning novel follows Lina Ashley, a determined solo female homesteader who takes her family from drought-ridden southern Alberta to a new life in the Peace River region. Here her daughter Poppy grows up in a community characterized by harmonious interactions between the local Métis and newly arrived European settlers. Still, there is tension between mother and daughter when Poppy becomes involved with a Métis lover. This novel expands the patriarchal canon of Canadian prairie fiction by depicting the agency of a successful female settler and, as noted by Dorothy Livesay, was “one of the first, if not the first Canadian novel wherein the plight of the Native Indian and the Métis is honestly and painfully recorded.” The afterword by Carole Gerson and Janice Dowson provides substantial information about author Christine van der Mark and situates her under-acknowledged book within the contexts of Canadian social, literary, and publishing history.

Christine van der Mark (1917–1970) was born and raised in Calgary. While teaching in rural Alberta schools, she attended the University of Alberta, receiving her B.A. in 1941 and her M.A. in Creative Writing in 1946. Much of her writing expressed sympathetic concern for the Métis of Northern Alberta.

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2015

Originally published in 1935, Frederick Niven’s The Flying Years tells the history of Western Can... more Originally published in 1935, Frederick Niven’s The Flying Years tells the history of Western Canada from the 1850s to the 1920s as witnessed by Angus Munro, a young Scot forced to emigrate to Canada when his family is evicted from their farm. Working in the isolated setting of Rocky Mountain House, Angus secretly marries a Cree woman, who dies in a measles epidemic while he is on an extended business trip. The discovery, fourteen years later, that his wife had given birth to a boy who was adopted by another Cree family and raised to be “all Indian” confirms Angus’s sympathies toward Aboriginal peoples, and he eventually becomes the Indian Agent on the reserve where his secret son lives. Angus’s ongoing negotiation of both the literal and symbolic roles of “White Father” takes place within the context of questions about race and nation, assimilation and difference, and the future of the Canadian West. Against a background of resource exploitation and western development, the novel queries the place of Aboriginal peoples in this new nation and suggests that progress brings with it a cost.

Alison Calder’s afterword examines the novel’s depiction of the paternalistic relationship between the Canadian government and Aboriginal peoples in Western Canada, and situates the novel in terms of contemporary discussions about race and biology.

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2015

In The Forest of Bourg-Marie, originally published in 1898, Toronto author and musician S. Franc... more In The Forest of Bourg-Marie, originally published in 1898, Toronto author and musician S. Frances Harrison draws together a highly mythologized image of Quebec society and the forms of Gothic literature that were already familiar to her English-speaking audience. It tells the story of a fourteen-year-old French Canadian who is lured to the United States by the promise of financial reward, only to be rejected by his grandfather upon his return. In doing so, the novel offers a powerful critique of the personal and cultural consequences of emigration out of Canada.

In her afterword, Cynthia Sugars considers how The Forest of Bourg-Marie reimagines the Gothic tradition from a settler Canadian perspective, turning to a French-Canadian setting with distinctly New-World overtones. Harrison’s twist on the traditional Gothic plotline offers an inversion of such Gothic motifs as the decadent aristocrat and ancestral curse by playing on questions of illegitimacy and cultural preservation.

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2015

From the pen of Gilbert Parker comes one of the most popular Canadian novels of the late nineteen... more From the pen of Gilbert Parker comes one of the most popular Canadian novels of the late nineteenth century. First published simultaneously in Canada and the United States in 1896, The Seats of the Mighty is set in Quebec City in 1759, against the backdrop of the conflict between the English and the French over the future of New France. Written and published after Parker’s move to England, the novel attempts to romanticize French Canada without alienating his English and American readership. The novel’s enduring popularity led to a stage version in 1897 and a silent film in 1914.

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2014

/The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation/ (1850) was one of the... more /The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation/ (1850) was one of the first books of Indigenous history written by an Indigenous author. The book blends nature writing and narrative to describe the language, religious beliefs, stories, land, work, and play of the Ojibway people. Shelley Hulan’s afterword considers Copway’s rhetorical strategies in framing a narrative—she considers it a form of "history, interrupted"—for a non-Indigenous readership.

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2014

/Painted Fires/, first published in 1925, narrates the trials and tribulations of Helmi Milander,... more /Painted Fires/, first published in 1925, narrates the trials and tribulations of Helmi Milander, a Finnish immigrant, during the years approaching the First World War. The novel serves as a vehicle for McClung’s social activism, especially in terms of temperance, woman suffrage, and immigration policies that favour cultural assimilation. In her afterword, Cecily Devereux situates /Painted Fires/ in the context of McClung’s feminist fiction and her interest in contemporary questions of immigration and “naturalization.” She also considers how McClung’s representation of Helmi Milander’s story draws on popular culture narratives.

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2014

/The Foreigner/ (1909) tells the story of Kalman Kalmar, a young Ukrainian immigrant working in r... more /The Foreigner/ (1909) tells the story of Kalman Kalmar, a young Ukrainian immigrant working in rural Saskatchewan. It addresses the themes of male maturation, cultural assimilation, and a form of “muscular Christianity” recurring in Connor’s popular Western tales. Daniel Coleman’s afterword considers the text’s departure from Connor’s established fiction formulas and provides a unique framework for understanding its depiction of difference.

Book Chapters by Benjamin Lefebvre

In Editing as Cultural Practice in Canada, edited by Dean Irvine and Smaro Kamboureli, 75–91. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016., 2016

This chapter explores editorial practices in a Canadian context, focusing on the role academic ed... more This chapter explores editorial practices in a Canadian context, focusing on the role academic editors have played in the creation and consolidation of L.M. Montgomery studies as an academic field. Crucial to the development of this field has been the publication of a wide range of trade and critical editions of her fiction as well as volumes of scholarly essays, life writing, and rediscovered primary work. Reflecting the multiple needs of myriad groups and institutions across space and time, the editing of Montgomery’s work since her death has contributed enormously to Montgomery scholarship around the globe.

In /Children and Cultural Memory in Texts of Childhood/, edited by Heather Snell and Lorna Hutchison, 47–65. New York: Routledge, 2014., Jan 2014

This chapter investigates a unique phenomenon in American children’s literature over the last twe... more This chapter investigates a unique phenomenon in American children’s literature over the last twenty years: the textual and ideological expansion of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, in the form of abridgments, rediscovered writings, and additional sets of books depicting the childhood and adolescence of three of Wilder’s forebears and one of her descendants. Focusing on the continued depiction of patriarchy and heterosexual marriage as the narrative “solution” to a female character’s coming of age, the chapter is especially concerned with the continued attempt to sell a particular formulation of the American past for readers at the turn of the twenty-first century.

In /Textual Transformations in Children’s Literature: Adaptations, Translations, Reconsiderations/, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, 175–96. New York: Routledge, 2013., Jan 2013

Drawing on recent theories of translation as cultural survival and on new shifts in the field of ... more Drawing on recent theories of translation as cultural survival and on new shifts in the field of adaptation studies, this chapter traces the complexities of adapting Laura Ingalls Wilder’s bestselling children’s book for television audiences of 1974 and 2005. While the adapted text’s major plot about a U.S. Anglo-American family settling in the “Indian Territory” of the post-Civil War period is retained, the book’s racist and patriarchal elements are reconsidered in explicit and subtle ways. This revisitation of these aspects of Wilder’s text is important not only as a commentary on the novel itself and the cultural story it tells, but in order to make this story relevant to later audiences.

In /Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace: Explorations in Canadian Women’s Archives/, edited by Linda M. Morra and Jessica Schagerl, 233–48. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012., Jan 2012

This chapter traces the approaches to the L.M. Montgomery archives by two researchers, one an ant... more This chapter traces the approaches to the L.M. Montgomery archives by two researchers, one an antiquarian book cataloguer and appraiser, one an academic with a background in Canadian literature and cultural studies. While their professional backgrounds differ, both authors have been drawn, personally and professionally, to the mystery surrounding Montgomery’s death in 1942, and discovered that with each clue that is unearthed, the enormity of the overall puzzle points to the impossibility of conclusive answers.

This chapter borrows from the work of past scholars who have examined the cultural industries tha... more This chapter borrows from the work of past scholars who have examined the cultural industries that expand and export L.M. Montgomery’s work and name to geopolitical contexts all over the globe in order to focus on the brand power of “Anne Shirley.” Aspects of Montgomery’s legacy over which she had no control literally came to life in 1934, when actor Dawn Paris took the name Anne Shirley as her stage name as part of her attempt to reinvent herself as a Hollywood star. The critical and commercial success of the film version of /Anne of Green Gables/ led to a sequence of early Hollywood film texts whose only relationship to Montgomery’s work is through the name and image of Anne Shirley. The inability of either Montgomery or Paris to exert control over the name or the identity anticipated the contested ownership of the Anne brand in the twenty-first century.

Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women's …, Jan 1, 2008

This chapter recovers an optional reading strategy built into L.M. Montgomery’s /Anne of Green Ga... more This chapter recovers an optional reading strategy built into L.M. Montgomery’s /Anne of Green Gables/, an alternative to the reading of the novel as a narrative of acculturation for child readers (particularly girls). It emphasizes Anne’s potential as an agent of social change, one who disrupts normative values that surrounding adults adhere to as she evolves from a pre-socialized child to a conventional (and consequently much less interesting) young woman. Using Montgomery’s journals as an intertext, the chapter considers some of the reasons for the novel’s enduring popularity across diverse reading audiences, particularly given the double-edged resolution in which Anne renounces her ambitions for the sake of the domestic sphere while gaining more agency than Montgomery herself had during the period of the novel’s composition.

University of Toronto Press, Dec 2015

This is the first book to consider the posthumous life of one of Canada's most enduringly popular authors.

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2016

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2015

Early Canadian Literature Series, 2014

In Editing as Cultural Practice in Canada, edited by Dean Irvine and Smaro Kamboureli, 75–91. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016., 2016

In /Children and Cultural Memory in Texts of Childhood/, edited by Heather Snell and Lorna Hutchison, 47–65. New York: Routledge, 2014., Jan 2014

In /Textual Transformations in Children’s Literature: Adaptations, Translations, Reconsiderations/, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, 175–96. New York: Routledge, 2013., Jan 2013

Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women's …, Jan 1, 2008

This chapter examines L.M. Montgomery’s rediscovered final project, /The Blythes Are Quoted/, now... more This chapter examines L.M. Montgomery’s rediscovered final project, /The Blythes Are Quoted/, now part of an archival repository at the University of Guelph. It considers the ways in which Montgomery’s anxieties about war and the future are woven into her final cycle of stories, which she mixed together with forty-one of her poems once she was no longer able to write in the journal she was preserving for posthumous publication. Drawing on Edward Said’s notion of “late style,” a form of reconsideration that he suggests occurs near the end of all lives, the chapter considers the ways in which this final typescript provides evidence of Montgomery’s reevaluation of her medium and her message as the storms of the Second World War raged on.

Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s concept of “simulacrum,” this chapter proposes that L.M. Montgomery... more Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s concept of “simulacrum,” this chapter proposes that L.M. Montgomery’s imagined community of Avonlea, ostensibly based on her own experience in Prince Edward Island at the turn of the twentieth century, is in fact a selective representation of reality, one that avoids cultural and historical specificity in order to make this imagined space highly appealing to readers who had never even heard of Prince Edward Island. By examining her bestselling novel, /Anne of Green Gables/ (1908), in the context of more recent adaptations and spin-off products, this chapter strives to ascertain how Montgomery’s fiction proved so universally malleable in the first place. While Montgomery’s creative choices are directly responsible for the books’ international relevance and popularity, this selective representation has a downfall when read as metonymically representing the nation.

This chapter draws on American cultural theories to investigate the involvement of the Disney Cor... more This chapter draws on American cultural theories to investigate the involvement of the Disney Corporation, an American conglomerate known for its subtle patterns of cultural domination, in the creation of the television series /Road to Avonlea/, both a “Canadian” popular culture phenomenon and an international televisual export. While this “family” series borrows from Disney’s patterns of innocence in its depiction of time and place, it nevertheless resists conforming to a narrow range of possibilities by focusing on alternative family structures, thus making the series both progressive and conservative simultaneously.

This essay brings to the forefront the work by Joy Kogawa that preceded and followed her watershe... more This essay brings to the forefront the work by Joy Kogawa that preceded and followed her watershed novel /Obasan/ (1981), which privileges the perspective of a traumatized child to narrate the internment of Japanese Canadians during and after the Second World War. The objective of the essay is to address an overlooked pattern of repetition and revision that can be traced across these multiple texts – a sequel, /Itsuka / Emily Kato/; a revision for children, /Naomi’s Road/; and a thematic follow-up, /The Rain Ascends/ – all of which were revisited by Kogawa after their initial publication. Drawing on pivotal work on trauma and memory, the essay considers to what extent Kogawa’s larger story of oppression, dispersal, and forgetting is unconcludable.

This paper investigates the role a child protagonist placed in a setting of suffering and injusti... more This paper investigates the role a child protagonist placed in a setting of suffering and injustice can play in the construction and performance of cultural citizenship in Canada, with particular attention to the ways that confirming or resisting the values of the status quo becomes linked with a young protagonist’s coming of age. In John Marlyn’s /Under the Ribs of Death/ (1957), Sandor Hunyadi defines himself not within his own Hungarian community but /in relation to/ “the English,” a term used interchangeably to signify a language, a class, an ethnicity, a nation, and an identity. But because the novel calls into question his desire to assimilate to such a narrow view of Canadian citizenship, he becomes an ironic “eye among the blind” in the citizenship debates that have persisted across the history of the nation.

Canadian literature, Jan 1, 2008

This paper pinpoints the ways in which discourses of agency, belonging, and citizenship are stage... more This paper pinpoints the ways in which discourses of agency, belonging, and citizenship are staged in a handful of Canadian texts for adolescents published in the last twenty-five years: Beatrice Culleton’s /April Raintree/ (1984), Marlene Nourbese Philip’s /Harriet’s Daughter/ (1988), Deborah Ellis’s /Parvana’s Journey/ (2002), Glen Huser’s /Stitches/ (2003), and Martine Leavitt’s /Heck Superhero/ (2004). These novels depict young people who are marginalized due to oppressive discourses such as racism, patriarchy, homophobia, poverty, and the dissolution of the nuclear family, and thus lack the support systems of the status quo. At the same time, they appear to broach larger questions about the construction of the Canadian nation alongside the story of a central protagonist’s growth from relative immaturity to relative maturity. Undercutting the dominant fantasy of a liberal and diverse nation-state, these narratives refuse to resolve or settle oppressive discourses that conflict with official policies of multiculturalism, keeping the ideal nation in sight but out of reach.

… Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la …, Jan 1, 2009

Drawing on British theories of representation as well as on Canadian, American, and Australian st... more Drawing on British theories of representation as well as on Canadian, American, and Australian studies of adolescent problem fiction, this paper discusses the complex system of representation at work in the television series /Degrassi: The Next Generation/, an adolescent soap opera in which episodes approach topical issues through good storytelling and a range of appealing characters for adolescent viewers to identify with. By focusing on two extended storylines dealing with abortion and gay male sexuality, the paper investigates how the series produces and circulates a range of subject positions for adolescent viewers to consider.

Le présent article retrace les changements abordés dans le dernier volet du roman Les Filles de C... more Le présent article retrace les changements abordés dans le dernier volet du roman Les Filles de Caleb d’Arlette Cousture, un récit que plusieurs lecteurs/lectrices et téléspectateurs/téléspectatrices ont reçu comme une tranche de leur Histoire nationale québécoise commune. En se penchant sur le statut de la femme, l’effondrement du pouvoir de l’Église catholique, la redéfinition du cadre familial et l’élargissement des possibilités identitaires au Québec dans les années frôlant la Révolution tranquille, l’article met en relief la révision au «Grand Récit» que ce dernier volet, L’abandon de la mésange (2003), offre à son lectorat francophone.

ESC: English Studies in Canada, Jan 1, 2007

This paper reconsiders whether L.M. Montgomery, author of two dozen novels beginning with /Anne o... more This paper reconsiders whether L.M. Montgomery, author of two dozen novels beginning with /Anne of Green Gables/, rejected modernism, an assumption that continues to be made by both her supporters and her detractors. By reading her experimental novel /A Tangled Web/ (1931) through the lens of feminist challenges to limited definitions of modernism, the paper examines the novel’s innovations to structure, narration, and subject matter in the context of Montgomery’s responses to evolving trends in the fiction of this period.

Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Jan 1, 2006

Drawing on the theories of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Mieke Bal, this paper examines two... more Drawing on the theories of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Mieke Bal, this paper examines two Canadian young adult novels—Diana Wieler’s /Bad Boy/ (1989) and Brian Payton’s /Hail Mary Corner/ (2001)—in which a gay male supporting character is used as a catalyst for a heterosexual protagonist’s gendered development. Although both straight heroes earn growth and forgiveness in what appear to be “satisfying” resolutions, the gay friends they reject remain trapped within a discourse of homophobia that is not adequately overturned. The ritualized rejection of the gay male body thus becomes a regulatory practice, not only for the supporting characters but potentially for the adolescent readers that these texts address.

Essays on Canadian Writing, 2002

This essay investigates the ways in which the film and television adaptations of L.M. Montgomery’... more This essay investigates the ways in which the film and television adaptations of L.M. Montgomery’s ANNE OF GREEN GABLES have eclipsed the very source text from which they are derived. Through an intertextual reading of two key films—a 1934 “talkie” from RKO Radio Pictures and Sullivan Entertainment’s 1985 television miniseries—the paper strives to discover how the films’ misunderstanding of the book’s satire and subversive messages works for viewers who have not read Montgomery’s text.

LM Montgomery and Popular Culture II

From the multiple film and television versions of /Anne of Green Gables/ to the weekly television... more From the multiple film and television versions of /Anne of Green Gables/ to the weekly television series /Road to Avonlea/ and /Emily of New Moon/, the numerous televisual adaptations of the work of L.M. Montgomery have enjoyed unprecedented popularity with viewers around the world while sometimes remaining enormously controversial to readers of her work. This annotated list of these productions is designed to aid scholars, readers, and viewers in their understanding of this ongoing phenomenon.

Canadian Children's Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse, Jan 1, 1999

This paper argues that the life and death of Walter Blythe at the centre of L.M. Montgomery’s nov... more This paper argues that the life and death of Walter Blythe at the centre of L.M. Montgomery’s novel /Rilla of Ingleside/ are completely atypical within the boundaries of the Bildüngsroman for which Montgomery’s work is renowned. Instead of representing Prince Edward Island as an Edenic concept of home and family, here Montgomery employs the imagery of the Island to symbolize the physical safety, the emotional security, and the sexual innocence of a character who is always seen as “different” in ways that are often associated with the homosexual closet.

Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, Jan 1, 2010

Reimer, Mavis, ed. Home Words: Discourses of Children's Literature in Canada. Waterloo, ... more Reimer, Mavis, ed. Home Words: Discourses of Children's Literature in Canada. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2008. xx+275 pp. $85.00 hc. ISBN 978-1-55458-016-3 . Print. Studies in Childhood and Family in Canada . ... Benjamin Lefebvre will spend the 2009-10 ...

Canadian Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse, Jan 1, 2004

Editorial to "Reassessments of L.M. Montgomery," a 2004 double issue of /Canadian Children's Lite... more Editorial to "Reassessments of L.M. Montgomery," a 2004 double issue of /Canadian Children's Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse/ that I guest edited.

… Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la …, Jan 1, 2007

... Assessments and Reassessments. Benjamin Lefebvre. Full Text: PDF Copyright © 2008 by CCL/LCJ,... more ... Assessments and Reassessments. Benjamin Lefebvre. Full Text: PDF Copyright © 2008 by CCL/LCJ, University of Winnipeg.

… Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la …, Jan 1, 2007

Les souvenirs d'enfance ont suscite d'ilu~ombrables ouvrages fictifs et artisti... more Les souvenirs d'enfance ont suscite d'ilu~ombrables ouvrages fictifs et artistiq~~es, prouvant que chaq~~e adulte est LUI ellfant q~li a surv6cu so11 eldance. I1 arrive que ces memoires d'ellfance fassent partie du q~uotidien ad~dte, si seulement colmne mesues de ...

… Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la …, Jan 1, 2007

... The Lives of Girls and Boys. Benjamin Lefebvre. Full Text: PDF Copyright © 2008 by CCL/LCJ, U... more ... The Lives of Girls and Boys. Benjamin Lefebvre. Full Text: PDF Copyright © 2008 by CCL/LCJ, University of Winnipeg.

/Essays on Canadian Writing/ 77 (Fall 2002): 90–99., Jan 1, 2002

Children's Literature, Jan 1, 2007

Girl Sleuth, the first book by Brooklyn critic and poet Melanie Rehak, makes an outstanding contr... more Girl Sleuth, the first book by Brooklyn critic and poet Melanie Rehak, makes an outstanding contribution to the field of children's literature and culture and to Nancy Drew studies more specifically. The book's unique methodological approach offers a new take on a popular-culture ...

Children's Literature, Jan 1, 2010

Nancy Drew and Her Sister Sleuths is an excellent collection of essays that emerged out of a conf... more Nancy Drew and Her Sister Sleuths is an excellent collection of essays that emerged out of a conference on &amp;quot;Nancy Drew and Girl Sleuths&amp;quot; held at the co-editors&amp;#x27; home institution of Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in February 2007. The bulk of the focus is on ...

… Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la …, Jan 1, 2007

... They Shoot, They Score! Benjamin Lefebvre. Abstract. A review of Slam Dunk, by Steven Barwin ... more ... They Shoot, They Score! Benjamin Lefebvre. Abstract. A review of Slam Dunk, by Steven Barwin and Gabriel David Tick; Cutting It Close, by Marion Crook; Hockey Heat Wave, by CA Forsyth; The Winning Edge, by Michele Martin ...

… Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la …, Jan 1, 2009

Bruhm and Natasha Hurley explain that their volume "is about stories: stories we tell to children... more Bruhm and Natasha Hurley explain that their volume "is about stories: stories we tell to children, stories we tell about children, stories we tell about ourselves as children" (ix). These "stories," which they also refer to as "dominant narratives," reveal a paradox between two ongoing and overlapping assumptions about children and sexuality: that "children are (and should stay) innocent of sexual desires and intentions" and that they "are also offi cially, tacitly, assumed to be heterosexual" (ix). Their volume focuses on the particular dominant narrative of compulsory heterosexuality as it pertains to the pressures of normative gender roles offered to children, but their comments about the power of the storyteller can be applied to a wider range of dominant narratives that coexist in tandem: "Who tells the story matters because the storyteller defi nes what can exist in the fi eld of representation" (x). In other words, the fact that writers of stories for younger readers are nearly always adults implies a form of power that is crucial to understanding how ideology is transmitted in this literature. "If writing is an act of world making," they posit, then "writing about the child is doubly so: not only do writers control the terms of the worlds they represent, they also invent, over and over again, the very idea of inventing humanity, of training it and watching it evolve" (xiii). This present review article is likewise about two overlapping sets of stories: the "dominant narratives" that circulate culturally about what it means to be a child and the stories that English-speaking authors in Canada write to enlighten, inspire, and entertain younger readers. This discussion occurs at the heels of my tenure as CCL/LCJ's Assistant Editor and Administrator throughout the journal's last three years at the University of Guelph. One of my favourite tasks as Administrator of the journal was to open packages of review books sent to us by publishers and to decide how to get these books reviewed. In early 2003, Marie C. Davis and I decided to adopt a new review format and to solicit from children's literature specialists review articles that considered a range of texts within a category or genre. Some of these review articles were longer than others-Perry Nodelman's review of seventy-nine picture books is the longest item published in CCL/LCJ since the journal's inception-but they all had something in common: by considering a range of texts at a time, these review articles helped us make sense of the books' overall ideological function and cultural production, in addition to their individual literary and aesthetic value. For instance, Nodelman notes that, while the majority of the seventy-nine picture books are well done individually, as a group they are "depressingly similar to each other" and to numerous picture books produced over the last century, both in Canada and elsewhere ("As the new bicycle he wants, he decides to get a summer job to pay for it himself. When a gruff hardware store owner hires him on, Cole learns more than he expected about the value of hard work, the responsibility of choosing right over wrong, and the importance of nurturing solid friendships that are based on communication and mutual respect. Cole learns to recognize the destructiveness of his relationship with his best friend Wayne, whom Cole simultaneously envies and fears. Although Cole admires Wayne's "devious" scheming to weasel out of doing domestic chores around the house (25-26), he reports that Wayne repeatedly "call[s] me a girl" (56)

Children's Literature, Jan 1, 2006

Although The Secret of the Hardy Boys promises a study of the relationship between a book package... more Although The Secret of the Hardy Boys promises a study of the relationship between a book packager of popular fiction for children and one of its key ghostwriters, Marilyn S. Greenwald's book delivers much more. Drawing on its subject's correspondence and diaries as well as ...

… Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la …, Jan 1, 2007

... The Gender Zones. Benjamin Lefebvre. Full Text: PDF Copyright © 2008 by CCL/LCJ, University o... more ... The Gender Zones. Benjamin Lefebvre. Full Text: PDF Copyright © 2008 by CCL/LCJ, University of Winnipeg.

Children's Literature Association …, Jan 1, 2008

Journal of Mennonite Studies, Jan 1, 2011

International Research in …, Jan 1, 2008

… Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la …, Jan 1, 2007

... Ice and Water. Benjamin Lefebvre. Full Text: PDF Copyright © 2008 by CCL/LCJ, University of W... more ... Ice and Water. Benjamin Lefebvre. Full Text: PDF Copyright © 2008 by CCL/LCJ, University of Winnipeg.

… Children's Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la …, Jan 1, 2007

... "Just Like Manitoba": Didacticism, Universalism, Eurocentrism. Benjamin Lef... more ... "Just Like Manitoba": Didacticism, Universalism, Eurocentrism. Benjamin Lefebvre. Abstract. A review of Naomi: The Strawberry Blonde of Pippu Town, by Karmel Schreyer. Full Text: PDF Copyright © 2008 by CCL/LCJ, University of Winnipeg.

In my doctoral dissertation, I use reader-response theory to gauge the ideological potential of t... more In my doctoral dissertation, I use reader-response theory to gauge the ideological potential of the child figure in a number of Canadian texts--two for children (Diana Wieler's Bad Boy [1989], Brian Payton's Hail Mary Corner [2001]), two for adults (John Marlyn's Under the ...

In The Blythes Are Quoted, a manuscript completed likely within the last two years of L.... more In The Blythes Are Quoted, a manuscript completed likely within the last two years of L.M. Montgomery's life with the aim of expanding her bestselling Anne of Green Gables series, Montgomery chooses to broach such social concerns as adultery, illegitimacy, hatred, spousal abuse, revenge, melancholia, misogyny, murder, aging, and death. These "adult" themes do not resonate as typical for her body of work, yet because her strategy differs from the larger themes of Canadian modernism, her text eludes pressures of categorization. This thesis involved creating a corrected, annotated, and publishable copy of this manuscript based on two original typescripts housed at the University of Guelph archives; the textual editing of these manuscripts is coupled with a detailed critical introduction, textual notes, and exhaustive archival bibliographies, all of which help place the text within its historical, biographical, and critical contexts.

University of Toronto Quarterly, 2002