Locating 'Fifth Business' and 'Surfacing' in post-centennial Canada: A study on the 'search for identity' tradition in English-Canadian literature since 1967

Robertson Davies's Fifth Business (1970) and Margaret Atwood's Surfacing (1972) portray different visions of Canada and its people. This thesis explores the constructions of Canada in the two novels and Canadian literary critics' responses to them. The analyses are located in the discourses of Canadian cultural nationalism in the twentieth century, and in particular, the movement that accompanied the celebration of Canada's centennial in 1967. At first glance, Davies's efforts to represent Canada as a part of an international confederation appears old-fashioned when compared with Atwood's attempt to seek Canada as an independent cultural unit in the early 1970s. However, as this thesis suggests, their portraits of Canada can be read as two versions of a deeply rooted Tory tradition. Moreover, Davies's international perspective, which challenges the Anglo-Celtic framework that perceives Canada in relation to Britain, the United States, and other English speaking countries, foreshadows the recent work of Canadian critics. Contemporary critics have revised their treatment of Canadian literary texts to reflect demographic changes over the past three decades.