Imagining the Canadian Agrarian Landscape: Prairie Settler Life Writing as Colonial Discourse

• Shirley Ann McDonald ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Alberta

     University of Alberta

     Canadá

     
• Localización: Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, ISSN 0004-1327, ISSN-e 1920-1222, Vol. 46, Nº. 4, 2015 (Ejemplar dedicado a: trauma and the Caribbean, contemporary Anglophone writing in China, madness as political resistance, and more), págs. 155-183
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Focusing on southern Alberta, my paper discusses the power of settler life writing to replace Indigenous conceptions of the prairies with colonial visions. Pioneer memoirs promote myths of the prairie as a fertile utopian environment or as a hostile frontier. By accentuating their labour and their social status, pioneer life writers support their claims of entitlement to colonize land.