Description
Speaker in the panel "Urban mythoi and the Making of History," chaired by Dr. Peter Jones.Toronto is A City of Trees and Rivers with Londoners Wandering in the Clearings
Toronto is a mean city. Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world. Toronto is the capital of Canada. Toronto winter is a thing beyond imagining. Most importantly, Toronto is just like New York but without all the stuff. These are some of the many urban legends and beliefs that originate from a town christened as York in 1793 and established as a city in 1834. Despite having witnessed decades of scholarly neglect in literary urban studies, today Toronto shines in fiction and, 225 years after its creation, is rediscovering its material history. Combining theory with practice in my analysis of Michael Redhill’s historical city novel Consolation (2006), I show how Toronto myths strongly connect to the imaginative and material qualities of the city, and explore whether Amy Harris’s statement “Toronto is a city in search of its own creation myth” is yet another half-truth or something we should pay attention to when reading TorLit. I will also argue that rather than clinging to uncritical myths, misbeliefs, and outdated imagery, we ought to study Toronto by trying to understand its history.
| Period | 29 May 2018 |
|---|---|
| Event title | The City: Myth and Materiality |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | London, United KingdomShow on map |