Environmental issues in contemporary Canadian narrative literature

GGRW -Green Grass Running Water NCW -Never Cry Wolf OC -Oryx and Crake (e.g.Lost in the Barrens) is the Canadian North, the region will be discussed in its importance for the Canadian literary and environmental imagination.The Canadian North is a very ambiguous literary construct: on the one hand, it is often shown as a vulnerable wilderness that is compromised by human activity.On the other hand, it is also depicted as a very dangerous place to live in.I will show, however, that in Mowat, it is the first construction that prevails, and that in his work, nature is portrayed as a victim rather than a predator.Thomas King's stories also show a strong concern for nature, but his approach is more subtle than Mowat's.Of Native American background, King merges literary and oral tradition in his works.His unconventional stories often blur the boundaries between human and animal world, and between Indian and Western culture.His tone of writing, like Mowat's, is often ironic on the surface, but behind his comic and often bizarre stories lurks a highly serious and activist message.King also looks at the role of Native tribes in his confrontation of the 'natural' and the 'cultural' world.His stories often feature First Nations' people who are caught between stereotypes and modernity, alternatively placing them on the 'natural' or the 'cultural' side of Western discourse and showing parallels of their situation and environmental issues.King's narrative style is as unorthodox as the scenarios he proposes in his stories.In his environmentally concerned texts he seems to seek for a reconciliation of nature and culture -with tragicomic results, that make one wonder if such a reconciliation is indeed still possible.His works novel Green Grass, Running Water, that will be the main focus of this chapter, can therefore be seen as a bridge between Mowat's traditional approach and Margaret Atwood's apocalyptic visions, which will be treated in the next chapter.Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake will be the central part of the subsequent chapter.The story, like some of Thomas King's short stories, envisions a scenario beyond the present and, possibly, beyond the realistic.Oryx and Crake is set in a future that might become reality if Mowat's conservative and King's integrative approach to solving today's environmental issues fail.It is a highly disturbing dystopian novel, trying to raise awareness to the problems humanity might face in the future.Atwood is clearly in line with Mowat in her depiction of the precarious situation of nature as a victim at the hands of humanity.However, she goes further than Mowat.By employing what Garrard (2012: 103) calls 'apocalyptic rhetoric' she shows how in destroying nature humanity could ultimately wipe out itself (cf.Buell 2001: 30ff.).An example from her short story

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.