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- Title
Hiding in Plain Sight: A New Narrative for Canadian Literary History.
- Authors
CALDER, ALISON
- Abstract
This essay imagines a new genealogy for Canadian Prairie writing, arguing that the development of a limited Prairie literary canon has led to two related critical perceptions: first, that early Prairie writing is of little value; and second, that there is little engagement with questions of colonial contact and intercultural relations between settler and Aboriginal cultures in early Prairie writing. While canonical Prairie texts generally depict the Prairie as agricultural space from which Aboriginal inhabitants have already been removed, lesser-known texts often engage with, and frequently re-enact the process of, that removal. Both kinds of texts depict the Prairie as White space, but the canonical ones present that construction as a fait accompli, whereas the lesser-known ones repeatedly depict its processes. This essay provides short readings of three lesser-known novels published before 1950 to show authors engaging in regional and national conversations about the future of the nation in ways that expand our understanding of the political work done by these novels and by the current Prairie canon itself.
- Subjects
PRAIRIE Provinces; CANADA; LITERARY criticism; GENEALOGY; AGRICULTURE; CANADIAN history; TWENTIETH century
- Publication
Journal of Canadian Studies, 2015, Vol 49, Issue 2, p87
- ISSN
0021-9495
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3138/jcs.49.2.87