Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorBridgeman, Joan
dc.date.accessioned2010-07-12T14:31:51Z
dc.date.available2010-07-12T14:31:51Z
dc.date.issued1981-03
dc.identifier.citationBridgeman, Joan. The "Indian," the "Other" in the Canadian Quest for Identity; A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Department of English..., University of Manitoba. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: University of Winnipeg, 1981.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10680/31
dc.description.abstract“The 'Indian,' the 'Other' in the Canadian Quest for Identity” focuses on four prairie novels of the 1970's to examine the relation of literature to a nation's identity. By looking at the way the authors use Indian characters and the myths of the place to connect with the “Wholly Other,” the thesis suggests that some modern novelists see the necessity of learning from Indian characters both the shamanic metaphor—that man must learn to divine the mysteries of life and death—and the Metis metaphor—that we must learn to mix the ancestral presences we bring with us with those we find in the place—in order to re-establish contact with the spirit of the place, the collective unconscious, the sacred “Wholly Other” within and without. In Gone Indian Robert Kroetsch sets up a dialectic in which the young quester disproves his advisor's inexorably tragic world view by following guides across the frontier of consciousness to overcome his fear of life and death. W. O. Mitchell has his protagonist in The Vanishing Point learn from the reserve, the Indians, and the trickster characters to reject his civilized rational death-in-life and to participate once again in the dance of the living whole. In The Temptation of Big Bear Rudy Wiebe's attempt to “let the land speak” through an imaginative re-creation of the spirit of Big Bear is qualified by the author's allusive method which subsumes the spirit of Great Parent of Bear to the Christian “Wholly Other.” Finally, in The Diviners, Margaret Laurence's heroine overcomes her modern anxiety about life and death by cognizing and recognizing her connections to the on-going cosmic process.en_US
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Winnipeg
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.subject"Indian", novelen_US
dc.subjectCanadian identityen_US
dc.subjectCanadian literatureen_US
dc.subject"Gone Indian", novelen_US
dc.subjectRobert Kroetschen_US
dc.subject"The Vanishing Point", novelen_US
dc.subjectW. O. Mitchellen_US
dc.subject"The Temptation of Big Bear", novelen_US
dc.subjectRudy Wiebeen_US
dc.subjectThe Divinersen_US
dc.subjectMargaret Laurenceen_US
dc.titleThe "Indian," the "Other" in the Canadian Quest for Identityen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.description.degreeMaster of Arts in English
dc.publisher.grantorUniversity of Manitoba
thesis.degree.disciplineEnglish
thesis.degree.levelmasters
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts in English
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Manitoba


Files in this item

Thumbnail

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record