The inclusion of contemporary Canadian and American literary prizewinning novels serves several purposes in this analysis. Most importantly, the analysis of prize winners provides a test of the competing unconscious-reflection-of-national-character and conscious-construction-of-national-identity arguments. The traditional reflection-of-national-character argument would expect contemporary high-culture literature to exhibit the same core cross-nationally distinctive characteristics as canonical literature since both types of literature are seen as reflecting natural national differences. An argument locating cross-national literary difference in the conscious construction of a unique nation, on the other hand, would not necessarily expect similar differences. Current literary prize winners, after all, are not contemporaneous with the nation-building process in the United States and Canada nor does their designation as worthy of a literary prize carry quite the same cultural authority as selection into the canon.

Second, the prize winners provide a comparison between Canadian and American high-culture texts that is unencumbered by period effects.