The Fiddlehead Moment
Pioneering an Alternative Canadian Modernism in New Brunswick
An exciting new reading of Canadian literary modernism that challenges many of the urban-centric biases and opinions still prevalent today.
Description
For many Canadians, the small province of New Brunswick on Canada's scenic east coast is "a nice place to visit but no place to live," plagued for generations by outmigration and economic stagnation. In The Fiddlehead Moment Tony Tremblay challenges this potent stereotype by showcasing the work of a group of literary modernists who set out to change the meaning of New Brunswick in the national lexicon. Alfred Bailey, Desmond Pacey, Fred Cogswell, and a formidable group of local poets and cultural workers - collectively, New Brunswick's Fiddlehead School - sought to restore New Brunswick's literary reputation by adapting avant-garde modernist practices to the contours of the province, opening it to the contemporary world while also encouraging writers to make it their subject. The result was a non-urban form of modernism that was as responsive to technical innovation as to the human geographies of New Brunswick. By placing New Brunswick writers and critics at the forefront of Canadian literature in the midcentury modernist project, Tremblay adds an important new chapter to our understanding of Canadian modernism. The Fiddlehead Moment is the first critical examination of this group's considerable influence. Whether through Bailey's ethnomethodology, Pacey's critical ordering, or Cogswell's editorial eclecticism in the Fiddlehead magazine and Fiddlehead Poetry Books, authors in New Brunswick, Tremblay argues, had a profound impact on writing in Canada.
Reviews
"An excellent study that addresses a significant gap in our understanding of the history of Canadian literature." Peter Thompson, Carleton University
"The Fiddlehead, founded in 1945, remains a Canadian literary institution 75 years later, and Tremblay's study of it has no counter text. His painstaking research provides a strong foundation for future studies in Atlantic Canada's modernisms." American Review of Canadian Studies
“Given that Tremblay’s analysis of modernism in New Brunswick constitutes a significant contribution to the assessment of Canadian modernism as a whole, The Fiddlehead Moment demonstrates that “the local does indeed matter in larger social formations and ... local producers, even in hinterlands like New Brunswick, influence the arc of movements in the country as a whole.”” Journal of New Brunswick Studies
"For years now, I have anticipated new scholarship by Tony Tremblay with the excitement usually reserved for the first few days of spring. Tremblay always offers a comprehensive overview not only of a literary movement, but also of the environment from which it sprang. His latest, The Fiddlehead Moment, is no exception. In addition to archive-supported literary, political, and social histories, there is also a vast postcolonial theoretical engagement woven throughout. [...] Tremblay demonstrates deep, unyielding commitment to telling a story that has not yet been accepted – the story of a powerful, productive, and culturally rich New Brunswick." Canadian Literature
"The Fiddlehead Movement offers an incisive analysis and fresh perspective not only on an alternative Canadian Modernism but also gives the reader an important and quite salutary take on the idea of national narrative and how it is constructed." Mary B. McGillivray, St. Francis Xavier University