Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2001. [Vol. 7.] Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 27)
Studies - Judit Ágnes Kádár: Histories, Truths, Fictions. Interdisciplinary Relations of Historiography and Philosophy in the Context of Recent Western Canadian Fiction
understanding. Of course the journey theme always has an Odysseyan implication. In Burning Water the above mentioned exploration and mapping theme coexists with unnaming, i.e., erasing previous names for land objects and then renaming them as a means of putting claim for possession. Becker's contemporary interpretation of Vancouver's story un-tells the older version of history, just as Anna Dawe's act of un-telling in Badlands. In The Invention of the World Kenneally's establishment and proclamation of a settlement, foundation of a community and creation of a usable past based on unifying myths and legends for that community are counterparted by Becker's unlayering these communal myths and legends and investigating other versions of the same story. These fictions present various quests for the past as a typical way of, on the one hand (re-)creating identity, and, on the other hand, conceptualizing the world, i.e., imposing a new order on the chaos of reality: by extending the chaos and using imagination — fantasy, vision, myth and mystic elements. Discontinuity introduced by Laurence, is accompanied by a new multiple voice technique in Wiebe's novels, mainly in The Temptations of Big Bear. The writer reveals the tension between the cultural awareness and discourses of the dominant culture and the politically and culturally intruded aboriginal culture. The previously voiceless as a possible alternative perspective here is the Indian who is treated with a kind of romantic primitivism, similarly to W. O. Mitchell's in The Vanishing Point , another book to appear in the same year (1973). The romantic primitivism of the Indian is present in Kroetsch's Gone Indian, too, but here he introduces irony as a central agent to "juxtapose mythical and historical realities of prairie experience" (Harrison 204). Kroetsch's novels are generally parodies of the myth of creation, quest for origins and un-naming fathers, where he "creates a prairie past by drawing its legendary or mythic forms closer to immediate, local experience" (Harrison 212). Multiple voice technique characterizes William Dawe's own heroic quest story noted down in his diary, challenged by his daughter's way of telling the same story as well as by another character, Anna Yellowbird, Dawe's Indian mistress. Kroetsch "replaces history's paradigm with that of archaeology" (Bowering "Great" 14). In the novels of Bowering and Hodgins novels the Vancouver and the Kenneally 31
