Fear of Flying?: The Myth of Daedalus and Icarus in Canadian Culture

To the Memory of Greg Curnoe The myth of Daedalus and has arguably assumed as much significance in the interpretation of Canada's post-colonial status as the much-evoked story of Caliban and Prospero. The events surrounding Greg Curnoe's Dorval mural and the Avro Arrow as well as the ambiguities raised by John Gray's Billy Bishop Goes to War illustrate how Canadian works of art and technological achievements have, with varying degrees of success, attempted to fuse the father's maturity with the son's daring. This fusion represents an effort to negotiate Canada's responsibility in nuclear age, claiming that the country's ethical superiority allows it to surpass the flawed legacies of Europe and the United States. Il est possible de soutenir que le mythe de Dedale et Icare eu autant d'importance dans l'interpretation du statut du Canada post colonial que le recit mille fois evoque de Caliban et Prospero. Les evenements autour du mural de Dorval de Greg Curnoe et l'Avro Arrow, ainsi que les ambiguites soulevees par Billy Bishop Goes to War de John Gray montrent comment les oeuvres d'art canadiennes et les realisations technologiques ont, des degres differents de reussite, tente de reunir maturite du pere et l'audace du fils. Cette fusion represente un effort de negocier, l'ere du nucleaire, responsabilite du Canada, qui affirme que sa superiorite ethique lui permet de surpasser un legs defectueux laisse par l'Europe et les Etats Unis. In the most extensive exploration to date of the interrelations between literature, art, and air travel, Felix Philipp Ingold suggests that, following Nietzsche, the modern interest in the Daedalus and myth has focused on two correlated interpretations, one existential, the other artistic. Medieval readers of the tale were inclined to perceive in it an allegory of hubris justly punished, view lingering on in certain psychological interpretations of the myth which claim that la tentative insensee d'Icare est restee proverbiale pour nervosite son plus haut degre... : folie des grandeurs, megalomanie (Diel quoted in Chevalier, Gheerbrant 517). Post-Nietzscheans by contrast sympathized with the son rather than with the father, dismissed Daedalus's warning as an invitation to mediocrity and unthinking obedience, and applauded Icarus's death as an individual's unconditional courage in the pursuit of his ideals. In artistic terms, rejects the principles of balance and tradition in favour of an ecstatic - and often lethal - pursuit of originality. Images of the winged man (still very much present in the experiments of Otto von Lilienthal) and of the airplane became incarnations of the extraordinary freedom and risk opening up before the Icarus novus. Ingold explores numerous examples to show just how extensive this fascination was. Most impressive perhaps are those images of flight that encapsulate entire ideological programs. Thus, the Italian futurists viewed the airplane as machine noteworthy for its ability to surpass and destroy the fetters of loathsome classical tradition. To the Russian constructionists Malevic and Tatlin, images of flight portrayed the agenda of communism, lifting people out of their oppression: between 1928 and 1932, Vladimir Tatlin created a sinuous birdlike machine of wood and fabric (Starr 10), and decade earlier he designed monument for the Third International that seemed to be spiralling towards the sky. Despite his thoroughness, however, Ingold omitted one important reinterpretation of the myth, namely its transformation into post-colonial allegory which, in its complexity, may - at least in Canadian context - equal the tale of Prospero and Caliban, already the subject of much criticism.2 In its use of the myth to represent history forcefully disrupted, the post-colonial interpretation parallels the futurist and Marxist versions discussed earlier, but there are significant complications in country with loyalist tradition strongly maintained even in times of nationalist assertion. …

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.