Negotiating Languages. An Introduction to the Writings of Seymour Mayne

Seymour Mayne’s literary output is imbued with Canadian-fashioned multiculturalism. Additionally, an indefatigable search for his Jewish roots and Yiddish texts as preservers of ethnic memory involved his fictions and word-sonnets in a restorative approach. In spite of his academic profession, Mayne has a keen eye for landscape, nature and ecological implications. His subtlety resides in the mellow humor with which he welcomes every oddity related to tradition, religious rituals, cultural conflicts, and consumerism. My paper will analyze the impressive gamut of Mayne’s multicultural understanding of the world and the versatile literary skills with which he reasserts his cultural and ethnic heritage under the cover of an ironic discourse.