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

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Susan Birkwood
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Septentrio Academic Publishing 2008-02-01
Series:Nordlit: Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur
Subjects:
Online Access:https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/1161
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:0809-1668
1503-2086