The Magic of Canadian Wilderness

Abstract

<p>An exploration of the relationship of Indian legends and myths of fabulous beings to Canadian fiction reveals an important literary development in the presentation of wilderness. This development may most clearly be expressed by the image of the Sasquatch running into the mind of "Man" in Margaret Atwood's poem "Oratorio for Sasquatch, Man, and Two Androids", for such an image demonstrates the movement of the fabulous wilderness from a physical, concrete, and external reality, to a mental, abstract, and internal one.</p> <p>Chapter One establishes some of the mythical and legendary dimensions of the wilderness through the motif of lost children. One of the more difficult experiences of the early settler was the loss of children to the woods, and writers soon came to fictionalize such incidents. Novels of lost children contain such fabulous elements as supernatural, cannibalistic Indians, anthropomorphic bears, Crusoe figures, Indian monsters, and primitive transformations into trees, wolves, and other animals. The novels included in Chapter One established the fundamental myth of the wilderness as a place both of potential order and meaning, as well as of potential chaos and worthlessness. Its potential for chaos is present in many of its fabulous elements, particularly the Indian, while its potential to be ordered is symbolized by the White children. Thus the novels of lost children set up the dichotomy between Red and White, wild and civilized, which runs through all of the works studied in this thesis. Perhaps most importantly the novels of lost children establish for this study the myth of the North American as a half-Red, half-White being, because their immersion into the primitive landscape alters their wholly white identities.</p> <p>In Chapter Two the leap from establishing some of the mythical dimensions of the wilderness to exploring more extensively its realization in Canadian fiction is made. The focus is upon the Indian, and Indian legends, in order to demonstrate that they mythologize the North American landscape in the same way that Greek and Roman legends mythologize Europe. It is also shown that they serve to sensationalize the North American continent, and to undercut the rational principles of western civilization.</p> <p>While the earlier writers studied in Chapters One and Two mythologized, or sensationalized, the landscape in spatial, physical terms, the contemporary writers studied in Chapter Three do so in non-spatial"psychological ones. In relatively recent fiction, the fabulous potential of the wilderness is not so much "out there" as it is "in "here". The despatialization and interiorization of the wilderness and its monsters into the minds of various characters examined in Chapter Three is shown to be a necessary and positive development.</p>