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Abstract
Canadian environmental philosopher Bruce Morito in Thinking Ecologically: Environmental Thought, Values and Policy (2002) based his call for a farewell from established epistemologies of Western knowledge systems on the “recognition that our mode of being in this world today is largely that of aliens”. Placing the responsibility for damages to the ecology on the human kind and stating that we as humans “cannot experience like a bat or a snake” or “a colony of ants” he demanded to accept the cognitive limitations of anthropocentrism and to give room to the specific modes of experience among the other living beings in the natural world.
I take Morito’s call as a starting-point for my discussion of two Canadian novels published nearly a century apart, one in English and one in French: Roberts’ The Heart of the Ancient Wood (1900) and Maillet’s L’Oursiade (1990). Both novels transfer the categories ‘tragic’ and ‘tragedy’ from human life to the world of wild animals thus signalling a revisioning of older attitudes to nature. In both novels bears appear as central protagonists. I will examine the authors’ different aesthetic and thematic constructions of animal perspectives, their representation of the relationship between humans and animals, and their degree of environmental consciousness.
In:
Green Matters
Author:
Abstract
Canadian environmental philosopher Bruce Morito in Thinking Ecologically: Environmental Thought, Values and Policy (2002) based his call for a farewell from established epistemologies of Western knowledge systems on the “recognition that our mode of being in this world today is largely that of aliens”. Placing the responsibility for damages to the ecology on the human kind and stating that we as humans “cannot experience like a bat or a snake” or “a colony of ants” he demanded to accept the cognitive limitations of anthropocentrism and to give room to the specific modes of experience among the other living beings in the natural world.
I take Morito’s call as a starting-point for my discussion of two Canadian novels published nearly a century apart, one in English and one in French: Roberts’ The Heart of the Ancient Wood (1900) and Maillet’s L’Oursiade (1990). Both novels transfer the categories ‘tragic’ and ‘tragedy’ from human life to the world of wild animals thus signalling a revisioning of older attitudes to nature. In both novels bears appear as central protagonists. I will examine the authors’ different aesthetic and thematic constructions of animal perspectives, their representation of the relationship between humans and animals, and their degree of environmental consciousness.
In:
Green Matters
Author:
Perhaps more than in any other period in modern history, our globalized present is characterized by a constant interaction of, and exposure to, different peoples, regions, ways of life, traditions, languages, and cultures. Cross-boundary communication today comes in various shapes: as mutual exchange, open dialogue, enforced process, misunderstanding, or even violent conflict. In this situation, ‘translation’ has become an inevitable requirement in order to ease the flow of disinterested and unbiased cultural communication. The contributors to this collection approach the subject of the ‘translation of cultures’ from various angles. Translation refers, of course, to the rendering of texts from one language into another and the shift between languages under precolonial (retelling/transcreation), colonial (domestication), and postcolonial (multilingual trafficking) conditions. It is also concerned with the (in-)adequacy of the Western translation concept of equivalence, the problem of the (un)translatability of cultures, and new postcolonial approaches (representation through translation). Translation here is used as a broader term covering the interaction of cultures, the transfer of cultural experience, the concern with cultural borders, the articulation of liminal experience, and intercultural understanding.
Perhaps more than in any other period in modern history, our globalized present is characterized by a constant interaction of, and exposure to, different peoples, regions, ways of life, traditions, languages, and cultures. Cross-boundary communication today comes in various shapes: as mutual exchange, open dialogue, enforced process, misunderstanding, or even violent conflict. In this situation, ‘translation’ has become an inevitable requirement in order to ease the flow of disinterested and unbiased cultural communication. The contributors to this collection approach the subject of the ‘translation of cultures’ from various angles. Translation refers, of course, to the rendering of texts from one language into another and the shift between languages under precolonial (retelling/transcreation), colonial (domestication), and postcolonial (multilingual trafficking) conditions. It is also concerned with the (in-)adequacy of the Western translation concept of equivalence, the problem of the (un)translatability of cultures, and new postcolonial approaches (representation through translation). Translation here is used as a broader term covering the interaction of cultures, the transfer of cultural experience, the concern with cultural borders, the articulation of liminal experience, and intercultural understanding.
Canadian and European Cultural Perspectives
Series:
Cross/Cultures, Volume: 25
This volume brings together essays which suggest that the relationship between Canada and Europe is a two-way process, as historically the traffic between them has been: either may have something to offer the other. Europe too acknowledges situations today in which difference and community are hard terms to reconcile. Difference refers to gender, sexuality, race, nationality, or language. Community is the collective understanding which must continually be renegotiated and reconstructed among these factors. The Canadian-European connection is one in which it seems especially appropriate to explore such circumstances. The topics covered include pioneer women's writing, transcultural women's fiction, canonical taxonomy of the contemporary novel, the city poem in Confederate Canada, poetry of the Great War, various ethno-cultural perspectives (Jewish, South Asian, Italian; Native reappropriations; Quebec cinema), literature and the media, and small-press publishing. Some of the authors treated: Sandra Birdsell, Nicole Brossard, Jack Hodgins, Henry Kreisel, Robert Kroetsch, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Archibald Lampman, Malcolm Lowry, Lesley Lum, Daphne Marlatt, Susanna Moodie, Bharati Mukherjee, Alice Munro, Frank Paci, and Susan Swan.
Canadian and European Cultural Perspectives
Series:
Cross/Cultures, Volume: 25
This volume brings together essays which suggest that the relationship between Canada and Europe is a two-way process, as historically the traffic between them has been: either may have something to offer the other. Europe too acknowledges situations today in which difference and community are hard terms to reconcile. Difference refers to gender, sexuality, race, nationality, or language. Community is the collective understanding which must continually be renegotiated and reconstructed among these factors. The Canadian-European connection is one in which it seems especially appropriate to explore such circumstances. The topics covered include pioneer women's writing, transcultural women's fiction, canonical taxonomy of the contemporary novel, the city poem in Confederate Canada, poetry of the Great War, various ethno-cultural perspectives (Jewish, South Asian, Italian; Native reappropriations; Quebec cinema), literature and the media, and small-press publishing. Some of the authors treated: Sandra Birdsell, Nicole Brossard, Jack Hodgins, Henry Kreisel, Robert Kroetsch, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Archibald Lampman, Malcolm Lowry, Lesley Lum, Daphne Marlatt, Susanna Moodie, Bharati Mukherjee, Alice Munro, Frank Paci, and Susan Swan.