Northern experience and the myths of Canadian culture / Renee Hulan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hulan, Renée.

Series:

McGill-Queen's native and northern series ; 29.

McGill-Queen's native and northern series ; 29

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canadian literature--History and criticism.

Canadian literature.

National characteristics, Canadian, in literature.

Inuit in literature.

Myth in literature.

Canada, Northern--In literature.

Canada, Northern.

Arctic regions--In literature.

Arctic regions.

Physical Description:

245 p. ; 24 cm.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

By investigating mutually dependent categories of identity in literature that depicts northern peoples and places, Hulan provides a descriptive account of representative genres in which the north figures as a central theme - including autobiography, adventure narrative, ethnography, fiction, poetry, and travel writing. She considers each of these diverse genres in terms of the way it explains the cultural identity of a nation formed from the settlement of immigrant peoples on the lands of dispossessed, indigenous peoples. Reading against the background of contemporary ethnographic, literary, and cultural theory, Hulan maintains that the collective Canadian identity idealized in many works representing the north does not occur naturally but is artificially constructed in terms of characteristics inflected by historically contingent ideas of gender and race, such as self-sufficiency, independence, and endurance, and that these characteristics are evoked to justify the nationhood of the Canadian state.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: A Northern Nation? 3

1. Speaking Man to Man: Ethnography and the Representation of the North 29

2. "Everybody Likes the Inuit": Inuit Revision and Representations of the North 60

3. "To Fight, Defeat, and Dominate": From Adventure to Mastery 98

4. Lovers and Strangers: Reimagining the Mythic North 138

Epilogue: Unsettling the Northern Nation 179.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-234) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-85945-5

9786612859458

0-7735-6944-8

OCLC:

929120619