From ”naked country” to ”sheltering ice”: Rudy Wiebe’s Revisionist Treatment of John Franklin’s First Arctic Narrative

Susan Birkwood

doi:10.7557/13.1161

Authors

Susan Birkwood Carleton University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/13.1161

Keywords:

Canadian literature, 1900-1999, Wiebe, Rudy (b. 1934), A Discovery of Strangers (1994), novel, treatment of exploration, of the Arctic, by Franklin, Sir John (1786-1847), Dene,

Abstract

Rudy Wiebe's A Discovery of Strangers (1994) offers a revisionist construction of Franklin's first expedition to find the North-West Passage, one that attempts to show the disparate views of the landscape held by the British explorers and the Yellowknife of the Coppermine region-one of the Dene peoples-and to sound a warning about the devastating effects of the arrogant will to dominate the environment. True to the conventions of historical fiction, Wiebe, makes Franklin, himself, a largely peripheral figure, choosing to focus on lesser known participants in the events of 1821.

Author Biography

Susan Birkwood, Carleton University

Susan Birkwood teaches Canadian literature and nineteeth-century British literature at Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada). Her research interests include late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century exploration and travel literature whose focus is Canada, along with historical fiction that offers a revisionist view of Canada's colonial past.