Making Avonlea: L. M. Montgomery and Popular Culture

by Irene Gammel (Editor)

Since the publication of Anne of Green Gables in 1908, L.M. Montgomery and the world of Anne have propelled themselves into a global cultural phenomenon, popular not only in Canada, but in places as diverse as Japan, the United States, and Iran. Making Avonlea, the first study to focus on Montgomery and her characters as popular cultural icons, brings together twenty-three scholars from around the world to examine Montgomery's work, its place in our imagination, and more specifically its myriad spin-offs including musicals, films, television series, t-shirts, dolls, and a tourist industry.

Invoking theories of popular culture, film, literature, drama, and tourism, the essayists probe the emotional attachment and loyalty of many generations of mostly female readers to Montgomery's books while similarly scrutinizing the fierce controversies that surround these books and their author's legacy in Canada. Twenty-five illustrations of theatre and film stills, artwork, and popular cultural artefacts, as well as snapshot pieces featuring personal reflections on Montgomery's novels, are interwoven with scholarly essays to provide a complete picture of the Montgomery cultural phenomenon. Mythopoetics, erotic romance, and visual imagination are subjects of discussion, as is the commercial success of various television series and movies, musicals, and plays based on the Anne books. Scholars are equally concerned with the challenges and disputes that surround the translation of Montgomery's work from print to screen as well as the growth of tourist sites and websites that have themselves moved Avonlea into new cultural landscapes. Making Avonlea allows the reader to travel to these sites and to consider Canada's most enduring literary figures and celebrity author in light of their status as international icons almost one hundred years after they first arrived on the scene.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Biography

347 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2002

About the author

Irene Gammel is a literary historian, biographer, and curator. Gammel teaches at Ryerson University in Toronto. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Modern Literature and Culture and is the Director of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre.

Gammel holds a PhD (1992) and MA (1987) in English from McMaster University, and a Staatsexamen’s degree from the Universität des Saarlandes in Germany. She taught at the University of Prince Edward Island and held Visiting Professorships at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena and Erfurt Universität in Germany. She also served as the President of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association. In 2009, she was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

As chief editor Irene Gammel points out in her introduction for this 2002 essay collection with the title of Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture, the comparatively recent scholarly
 rediscovery of L.M. Montgomery 
has generally focused almost entirely on the literary merits of her fictional 
creations and mostly to the exclusion of critical considerations of the cultural
 phenomenon that L.M. Montgomery and her works have very much lastingly engendered.

But albeit I am definitely much more a literature buff than a pop culture aficionado, well, I do have to admit that the collection of articles found in Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture pretty successfully demonstrates how the fictional 
world of in particular Avonlea has had a profound effect and impact on popular culture (both in Canada and also abroad), resulting
 in the commodification of both L.M. Montgomery's and Anne of Green Gables' name and producing a lucrative 
entertainment and tourism industry. Drawing on new scholarship by 
popular culture theorists concerning commodity value, aesthetics and 
social impact, as well as theories regarding girl's culture, the contributors of Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture examine the many questions surrounding Montgomery’s enduring
 popularity and how said popularity has resulted in a culturally constructed representation of
 an L.M. Montgomery with considerable commercial, financial value (which the article authors seem to accept at face value and not ever really see as potentially problematic but which for me personally has chafed and grated a bit, as I do see and want to approach L.M. Montgomery's oeuvre mostly with regard to literature and penmanship, and that I therefore most certainly have more appreciated the intent of Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture than I have actually enjoyed reading the featured essays with regard to literary pleasure and joy).

So yes, the articles presented in Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture show and represent a wide variety of perspectives and approaches to
 popular culture, and apply these various cultural theories to the
 examination of the emotional response of readers to Montgomery’s
 texts, and how the literary devotion of her fans has inspired the 
creation of movies, musicals, television series, theme parks, and 
accompanying merchandise (which does make me definitely cringe a bit, as indeed, what bothered me the most when I finally had the chance to visit Prince Edward Island and where the fictional Avonlea was supposed to be was how everything was basically geared towards and focussing on materialism). Beginning with an examination and analysis of Anne of Green Gables as a popular
 cultural icon, Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture engages in the debate 
between literary purists and the defenders of the many film and
 television adaptations that have taken considerable liberties with 
Montgomery’s texts and characters (and I am firmly on the side of the literary purists in that respect even though I do now after my perusal of Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture to a point understand more readily from where the adapters and the film defenders are coming).

Finally, while I do value the exploring in Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture of Montgomery’s remarkable and often even more fervent than in Canada popularity abroad (and in particular and of course in Japan), frankly, part of me also kind of thinks that in some of the featured articles of Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture there seems (to me at least) to be a definite preference of non Canadian fans of L.M. Montgomery being shown, and I do therefore have to personally wonder a bit how L.M. Montgomery herself would feel about this and if she might not kind of feel like the way Anne of Green Gables is approached, depicted and adored abroad kind of devalues Canada and Anne being a Canadian girl and later in the AOGG series, a Canadian woman.

[Teghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous collection of essays on LMM's work. I've used this book countless times in my own research. This book will age well as the issues explored have a sort of time-less quality to them, a quality they share with the source material.

[Karen]

This was interesting to read, but just couldn't compete with the fiction I read for fun. I never finished it.

[laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought this book would be a bit of a slog but it was actually great! Enjoyed thinking L.M Montgomery's work in new ways, also made me want to re-read.

[LuAnn · Rating 3 out of 5]

My interest in LMM lies in enjoying her works and understanding her life and its influence on her works, so the first section, “Mapping Avonlea: Cultural Value and Iconography” is of most interest to me. The section “Touring Avonlea: Landscape, Tourism, and Spinoff Products“ is mainly for me a fun revisiting of my trip to Prince Edward Island several years ago.

The ones in the section “Viewing Avonlea: Film, Television, Drama, and Musical” that are critical even disdainful (which does not seem to suit a scholarly work) of the Sullivan Entertainment productions fail to acknowledge the value of these productions in reawakening awareness of the original works, something that should be celebrated.
While most of these essays are readable for non-academics, a few are written in highfalutin “academese” which obscures details of the author’s points.