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
legends are reshaped by a number of voices from both the past and the present. Here the treatment of historical recordings and the approach of the past is very similar to those in Kroetsch's fiction. Regarding this respect, important common features of the novels of Kroetsch, Wiebe, Hodgins and Bowering are the analogous attitudes of the central characters to the land and their psychologically resembling personalities. As for the second, the personalities of the central characters denote a special reference to the different aspects of history as a science. As Kroetsch says: "Western has too readily served to universalize highly ambiguous and even morally reprehensible local events —conquest, imperialism. Manifest Destiny, destruction of the environment, particularly racism and other exercises in domination and control" (Davidson 82-3), i.e. different names for heroism. Seeking control over one's environment as well as over one's own self is embodied in various subtypes according to the motivations of the central characters in the dominant narratives and the reinvention of the original stories. These subtypes apparently seem to follow certain paternal patterns. In Burning Water , in The Temptations of Big Bear and even in Beautiful Losers a historical or mythic personality (founding father) is reinvented in the course of the novel, while The Invention of the World presents the reinvention and/or erasure of communal myth of origins (religious father). Other novels like Badlands or The Diviners reinvent personal past experiences and myths of those in parental relations (genetic father), whereas the image of the Other (natives, immigrants, exiles) is reinvented for example in Joy Kogawa's Obasan , in Wiebe's The Temptations of Big Bear , in Kroetsch's Collected Works of Billy the Kid or in Cohen's Beautiful Losers. Conclusion A major theme of all novels related to historiographic metafiction in the special Western Canadian context is the de-centering of the socalled grand official narratives widely accepted and spread by the shapers of public opinion. Bakhtin's idea of resistance through literature (i.e., the decision of un-telling the grand narratives) brings this branch of arts back to its pre-modern function, and refuses modern claims for the non-referential concept of the novel that did not 32
