Acknowledgements

This book is based on my Ph.D. thesis completed at the English Department, Peking University. I am grateful to quite a number of people for their help in the completion of my enterprise. First and foremost, I am indebted to my supervisor, Professor Liu Yiqing, for her unwavering commitment to this project of mine and her constant support, caring, and patience throughout the years of my research. I thank Prof. Liu especially for laboriously reading the typescripts of my dissertation at various stages and sharing with me her insights, for giving me an understanding of the perfect union of rigour and laxity, of academic discipline and autonomy. I also thank her for rendering me tremendous help in negotiations with publishers to bring out my book, for providing me with financial aid in times of difficulty, etc., etc. In a word, I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Prof. Liu for everything she had done for me, although I realize that my verbal incapacity can never give her full credit.

I owe my gratitude also to Professor Greg Maillet of Atlantic Baptist University in New Brunswick. It was Greg who helped me narrow down on the topic of regionalism in Canadian literature during my stay in Regina. He helped me collect materials relating to my project and acted as my supervisor on the Canadian side. He also shared with me his recordings of Alistair MacLeod.

Last but not least, I would like to thank the Canadian Embassy in Beijing for providing me with the 2002 CCSEP (Canada-China Scholarly Exchange Program) scholarship, which enabled me to have a concrete conception of the importance of regions in Canada.