This course will offer a survey of Canadian writing from the eighteenth century to the present day.  We will read and discuss representative authors from each period of Canadian literary history, considering how recent critical methodologies allow us to re-evaluate the Canadian literary past, re-situating neglected Canadian texts in transatlantic, postcolonial, and world literary contexts.  The problematics of the construction of a Canadian canon, the effects of shifting conceptions of Canadian nationality, and the growing importance of First Nations and multicultural literature will also be considered.   Readings will be drawn from exploration, travel, missionary, and pioneer literature, from the developing national literature of the post-Confederation period, and from the modernist, post-modernist, and contemporary periods.