It's Not by Any Lack of Ghosts. We're Haunted.

First Nations Gothic and Spiritual Realism
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-3-8260-5407-5
Verlag: Königshausen & Neumann

Buch, Englisch, Band 14, 168 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 570 g

Reihe: text & theorie

The writing of Canada’s aboriginal peoples is, predictably, replete with colonial history and (post-)colonial horrors. It is also replete with myth – from the ubiquitous trickster to all sorts of ghosts that have come to haunt First Nations people in a (post-)colonial, globalized world. This study looks at four contemporary First Nations novels to trace these ghosts – Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach, Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen, and Drew Hayden Taylor’s The Night Wanderer and Motorcycles and Sweetgrass. It explores the question of how a traditional Eurocentric mode, the gothic, at the heart of which lie both imaginary horrors and the (colonial) binary of ‘self’ and ‘other’, can be turned back on itself in a very deliberate ‘writing back’ paradigm to express very real colonial horrors. This study also centers on the phenomenon of spiritual realism, prevalent in post-colonial writing all over the world, a mode in which mythical and spiritual elements enter a narrative of undiluted social realism to create a hybrid, decolonizing life-world, facilitating and celebrating a recovery of indigenous identity and culture in a globalized world, balancing colonial history with First Nations heritage.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hauzenberger, Georg

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Gattungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturkritik: Hermeneutik und Interpretation
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Postkoloniale Literaturen in Englisch, Englische Literatur außerhalb Europas
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Über Autor(innen)

Georg Hauzenberger studied English Literature, Canadian Studies and Economics at the University of Augsburg and Carleton University, Ottawa, sparking his interest in First Nations writing. He has an administrative post at the University of Augsburg.