Comics in The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature: is sequential art the future of the Canadian literary canon?
Résumé
This paper, both a testimony and reflection about the author’s experience as contributor of the “comic art and bande dessinée” chapter of the Cambridge History of Canadian Literature (Cambridge UP, 2009) discusses the challenge of summarizing the essentials of Canadian comics history since the mid-19th century in 6,000 words and proceeds to answer the following question: why does Canada’s literary canon integrate comics whereas its French and American counterparts, for instance, have so far failed to do so? This phenomenon appears closely linked to one aspect of Canada’s postcolonial specificity—the country’s intellectual elites’ comprehensive outlook on cultural production. This “limited elitism” approach actually became a hallmark of Canadian cultural policy as of the 1950s following the Massey Commission’s introduction of the “Canadian content” concept and the subsequent development of an open-ended conception of national culture. Canada’s cultural context provides a very interesting example of the ongoing legitimization of comics in the 21st century but also, more broadly, of the dynamics that permanently rewrite a national literary canon.