For this question we were asked to first read Lee Maracle’s “Toward a National Literature.” Specifically, to try to understand what was meant when the author said, “In order for criticism to arise naturally from within our culture, discourse must serve the same function it has always served. In Euro-society, literary criticism heightens the competition between writers and limits entry of new writers to preserve the original canon. What will its function be in our societies?” (Maracle 88). She gives an answer in the following lines, and to the best of my understanding it’s something like this: stories, and the literature that forms around them, function in society as a kind of blueprint for ideal behavior, relationships, organizations, etc. Through criticism of this literature, a society can parse out the meaning and assimilate those “blueprints” into itself, while leaving out that which the society doesn’t find useful. Through this process the society can grow and transform into something more ideal.

Maracle says something along these lines further down in the paragraph, saying, “The purpose of examining an old story is first to understand it; second, to see oneself in the story; and then to see the nation, the community, and our common humanity through the story and to assess its value to continued growth and transformation of the community and the nation.” (88). This is what I feel to be the core of Maracle’s view on literary criticism, at least in the specific Salish sense. She speaks at other times about the European tradition of criticism, seeing in it nothing more than a “competition between writers.” (88). Whether or not this is the case is not for me to say, though my instinct is that the purpose of  this kind of criticism does not differ all that much between different cultures and nations.

In comparing the views of Maracle and Fry on the topic of literary criticism and myth as it relates to nation-building, one difference stood out to me. There seemed to me to be not so much a difference in opinion on the subject, but rather a difference in the order of operations. We’ve already seen that Maracle believes story and literature to come first, followed by the criticism that allows society to assimilate what it feels to be beneficial and discard what it does not. My sense is that Frye sees this process as being exactly the reverse. On page 234 he writes, “Literature is conscious mythology: as society develops, its mythical stories become structural principles of storytelling, its mythical concepts, sun-gods and the like, become habits of metaphorical thought.” (Frye 234). Later he writes, “At the heart of all social mythology lies what may be called, because it usually is called, a pastoral myth, the vision of the social ideal.” (240). Frye, in my opinion, seems to feel that literature reflects the mythology of society, acting as a kind of mirror – as opposed to Maracle’s interlocutor. Criticism helps us to understand these social ideals, these mythologies, but I don’t get the sense from Frye that he believes it to be possible to just take what you like and plug it into wider society and discard the rest. This may be an oversimplification of Maracle’s view, and indeed the only real difference might be the kind of societies we’re talking about: Maracle’s being small and local, a tight-knit community wherein small actions can have resonating consequences; Frye, rather, speaking about Canada at large, a broad and disjointed collection of communities. It seems to me that the kind of active interlocution Maracle suggests  is far more tenable in a local community vs a nation of millions, but again I may be misunderstanding one or both authors.

Works Cited

Frye, Northrop. The Bush Garden; Essays on the Canadian Imagination. 2011 Toronto: Anansi. Print.

Maracle, Lee. “Toward a National Literature: A Body of Writing.” Across Cultures, Across Borders Canadian Aboriginal and Native American Literatures by Paul Warren Depasquale, Renate Eigenbrod, Emma Larocque (z-lib.org), Broadview, 2010. Print.

This is an early post on the way that technology is affecting the ways in which we tell and share stories, among other things. I chose this post because I feel, due to my age, that I had a somewhat intuitive sense of the way in which certain technologies are shaping the world around us, and that this lent itself to a better-than-average blog post.

Assignment 1:3 – Technology and Story

This post dealt with my “sense of home.” I chose this because of how much I enjoyed writing it. It was extremely rewarding to take time to trace my ancestry and the movements of my ancestors and then to tie their experiences into my own life, which has found me moving a great deal.

Assignment 2:2 – My Sense of Home

This last post is an analysis of the introduction to “Living by Stories,” and in a way of the character of Harry Robinson specifically. I chose this because the aforementioned introduction has been my favorite thing that we’ve read thus far, and I found Robinson to be a fascinating person.

Assignment 2:4 – Question 2: Robinson on Making Meaning from Stories

I chose to read Robinson’s story, “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England,” prior to reading King’s article. By the time I came to King’s article I had read Robinson’s story in my head and out loud a few times, and I’m glad I arranged things this way. Reading King’s article after having gone through Robinson’s story, I found myself nodding along with how King described Robinson’s literature. One passage in King’s article in particular perfectly described my experience in reading Robinson’s story. At the bottom of page 186, King writes, “[Robinson] develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats readers’ efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read the stories out loud.”

Just as King stated would happen, I found my efforts to read the story silently “defeated.” Though on my first reading I didn’t speak the story out loud (I did in my second reading), there was a very clear and distinct voice in my head that was, in a way, performing the story as I read it. The syntax of the story very plainly lends itself to this. The rhythm of the lines, the breaks between lines, the stops and starts, the word choice and “interesting” grammatical choices all work to make it feel unnatural to read silently – or, perhaps more accurately, work to make it feel natural to read out loud.

For me this effect was most pronounced in the parts of the story that consisted heavily of dialogue, particularly between Coyote and the King, like pages 70-75. I’m not sure there’s something special about dialogue, but more probably that there are more stops and starts in the text itself. It could also be that the unusualness of the word and grammar choice is most pronounced in the dialogue, as it feels more unnatural.

As to how this oral syntax shapes the meaning of the story, I’m not certain but I have an idea. Reading silently, I feel like I “smoothed over the text,” if that makes any kind of sense. The line breaks, pauses, etc. were all less emphasized. Reading it aloud on my second reading, I found myself accentuating those pauses and breaks, adding and detracting emphasis from certain parts of the text. Emphasis can do much to alter the meaning of something, as well as add an emotional layer that’s not present in a dry, “smooth” reading.

I also found myself imagining a speaker performing this story with hand gestures, though I never acted them out myself. The way the story is written lends itself to that, I feel.

Works Cited

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190.

Robinson, Harry. “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England.” Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 64-85.

This question asks us to first discuss two reasons given for the limiting of our capacity to find meaning from first stories, and then to find and discuss a third reason given by Robinson himself in the introduction to “Living by Stories.”

The first reason given is that the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story. The introduction to “Living by Stories” gives several examples of the importance of the storyteller and the problems found in the loss of said storyteller. Right at the beginning of the introduction we are shown a brief glimpse of the power of the storyteller; at the bottom of page seven Wickwire writes, “[…] Harry told this story without interruption or props beyond a continuous series of striking hand gestures that were choreographed into the narrative.” This shows how the element of the storyteller is an integral aspect of the story itself. To further develop this point, Wickwire writes on page eight, “The print versions of these stories were short – on average, a page or two in length – and lifeless. Most lacked the detail, dialogue, and colour of Harry’s story. Many were also missing vital segments […] In many cases, collectors had created composite stories from multiple versions, which erased all sense of variation in the local storytelling traditions.” (italics added for emphasis). There is a distinct sense that, not only is the storyteller an integral part of the story, but attempts to replace the storyteller with the written word will inevitably leave out vital parts of the story, capturing fragments rather than the whole.

The second reason given is “the extended time of criminal prohibitions against indigenous people telling stories combined with the act of taking all the children between 5 – 15 away from their families and communities.” Again, the introduction provides us with reasons as to why this impacts our capacity to find meaning in stories, though this reason seems to me to be far more self-evident than the previous. On pages twenty and twenty-one, Wickwire writes, “Although he had spent lots of time listening to his grandmother and her contemporaries tell stories, he did not begin to tell stories until he was immobilized by the injury […] He explained that the stories all came back to him much like ‘pictures’ going by.” Here we see the necessity for close familial and communal relations for the transmission of these stories. The only reason Robinson was able to become a storyteller was because he spent his early life inundated in his own community. The removal of children from their communities makes it impossible for them to grow up in this way, thereby cutting them off from the transmission of these stories. If you don’t grow up listening to these stories, they’ll never come back to you like “pictures going by” in your old age.

I had a bit of trouble finding a third reason. At no point in the introduction does Robinson flatly say “a reason for this is x.” There seemed to me to be, however, a certain line of thought that Robinson touched on several times in the introduction. That being the necessity of time in the telling and retelling of these stories. On page twelve Wickwire, quoting Robinson, writes, “”Well, I can’t tell them noting in two, three hours. Very little. But some people, one man, we talk, I and he, for over twelve hours. So they really come to know something of me. It takes a long time. I can’t tell stories in a little while.” This idea is revisited again later on. Again on pages twenty and twenty-one, Wickwire writes, “The hip injury turned out to be a good thing for his storytelling. Although he had spent lots of time listening to his grandmother and her contemporaries tell stories, he did not begin to tell stories until he was immobilized by the injury. While running his ranches, he simply had no time to sit for hours telling stories.” As far as I can tell, this is a third reason that Robinson gives for our limited capacity to find meaning from first stories. Both telling the story and listening to the story require time, lots of time, time that many if not most of us in the modern world don’t have. It requires a different, slower way of living, one in which you can afford to allow yourself to be swept up for hours listening to a storyteller perform their first stories for you.

Works Cited

Robinson, Harry. “Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory.” Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books 2005. (1-30)

For this assignment I read the blog posts of Sarah Afful, Nargiza Alimova, Emilia Brandoli, Megan Cameron, Aran Chang, and Sophie Dafesh (it’s a complete coincidence that they’re the first six students listed on the “student blogs” page I swear). This is my list of takeaways/summaries from their stories, along with commentary:

• Home is found in the love of one’s family
  •  Particularly when one is young
• The home for an immigrant is elusive, and they often feel stuck between two worlds
  •  When one moves from one place to another, especially when it’s a regular thing, one is unable to develop the same kind of attachment to the geographic place wherein one resides that others do
• Home is a point in time with one’s family
  •  I particularly liked this point, it emphasizes the fact that physical location isn’t as important as temporal location
• Home is found within one’s relationships
  •  Similar to previous points made in other stories, but makes the important point that it’s not just familial bonds that can create a sense of home, but friendships as well
• Home is a circle of love that one surrounds oneself with
  •  Similar to previous points made, but I particularly liked how it was worded (I pulled this almost verbatim from the story)
• Home is a complicated feeling made up of many parts
  •  It’s difficult to define what “home” means, and any attempt to define it will inevitably leave out an important aspect
• One can’t truly understand one’s home until one leaves it
  •  Related especially to the point made about immigrants, and applies to more than just one’s home. Similar to the saying “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.” It’s always difficult to appreciate or understand something when you’re in close proximity to it, it often requires taking a step back (physically, temporally) and viewing it more objectively/reflectively in order to truly understand/appreciate it