Research Catalog

Title

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

Author

Hulan, Renée, 1965-

Publication

Montréal : McGill-Queen's University Press, ©2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

245 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"In Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture Renee Hulan disputes the notion that the north is a source of distinct collective identity for Canadians. Through a synthesis of critical, historical, and theoretical approaches to northern subjects in literary studies, she challenges the epistemology used to support this idea." "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."--Jacket

Series Statement

McGill-Queen's Native and northern series ; 29

Uniform Title

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

Subject

• Canadian literature > History and criticism
• Canada, Northern, In literature
• National characteristics, Canadian, in literature
• Identity (Psychology) in literature
• Indigenous peoples in literature
• Littérature canadienne > Histoire et critique
• Canada (Nord) dans la littérature
• Canadiens dans la littérature
• Identité (Psychologie) dans la littérature
• Indigenous peoples in literature
• Canadian literature
• Identity (Psychology) in literature
• National characteristics, Canadian, in literature
• Literatur
• Nationalbewusstsein
• Norden Motiv
• Mythos
• Het Noorden
• Mythevorming
• Culturele identiteit
• Letterkunde
• Kanada
• Kanada <Nord, Motiv>
• Eskimo

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

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

Contents

Introduction: A northern nation? -- Speaking man to man : ethnography and the representation of the north -- "Everybody likes the Inuit" : Inuit revision and representations of the north -- "To fight, defeat, and dominate" : from adventure to mastery -- Lovers and strangers : reimagining the mythic north -- Epilogue: Unsettling the northern nation.

ISBN

• 0773522271
• 9780773522275
• 077352228X
• 9780773522282

LCCN

• 2002437307
• 9780773522282

OCLC

• ocm47161940
• 47161940
• SCSB-1252516

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library