Literature in Canada 2.0

Assignment 3.2

Narratives assume, in Blanca Chester’s words, “a common matrix of cultural knowledge.” The Four Old Indians are perhaps the best examples of characters that belong to a matrix of cultural knowledge, which excludes many non-First Nations. What were your first questions about and impressions of these characters? How have you come to understand their place in the novel? I had read this novel a couple times in my earlier course at UBC with Dr. Paterson, so I was familiar with the importance of the number 4, the Medicine Wheel, and…read more

Mar.12

Assignment 3.1

Posted by jbernoe in Assignment 3.1

Frye writes: A much more complicated cultural tension [more than two languages] arises from the impact of the sophisticated on the primitive, and vice a versa. The most dramatic example, and one I have given elsewhere, is that of Duncan Campbell Scott, working in the department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa. He writes of a starving squaw baiting a fish-hook with her own flesh, and he writes of the music of Dubussy and the poetry of Henry Vaughan. In English literature we have to go back to Anglo-Saxon times to…read more

Mar.10

Assignment 2.3

Posted by jbernoe in Assignment 2.3

In order to address this question you will need to refer to Sparke’s article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” You can easily find this article online. Read the section titled: “Contrapuntal Cartographies” (468 – 470). Write a blog that explains Sparke’s analysis of what Judge McEachern might have meant by this statement: “We’ll call this the map that roared.” Matthew Sparke touches on a post-colonial problem concerning Canadian identity, nationalism, and prejudice all bound up within the law by way…read more

Mar.03