Annotating Literary History

Canadian Modernism of the 1930s and 1940s

In 1978, the poets Dorothy Livesay, Anne Marriott, and Irving Layton were invited to Simon Fraser University to take part in a panel discussion on the history of Canadian modernism in the 1930s and 1940s. This project explores how AudiAnnotate’s digital annotation workflow can gesture towards an understanding of the panel recording as a site of negotiation between the three poets; as such, the following annotations reveal how the content of Livesay, Layton, and Marriots’ speech present an oral document of literary history, while their positions as modernists are re-articulated within the context of the present time of the recording. Additionally, the digitally adapted transcription works to map the rich constellation of referenced literary communities, figures, cultural institutions, and historical events that simultaneously inform each of the panelist’s respective personal and historical narratives.