An Exploration of Canadian Identity in Recent Literary Narratives of the Franklin Expeditions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.3.1-2.193-200Keywords:
Canadian literature and culture, Franklin Expedition, Stan Rogers (“Northwest Passage”), Margaret Atwood (“The Age of Lead”), Rudy Wiebe (Discovery of Strangers), John Wilson (North with Franklin)Abstract
Sir John Franklin’s three expeditions to the high Arctic in 1819, 1825, and 1845 have become the stuff of Canadian legend, enshrined in history books, songs, short stories, novels, and web sites. Franklin set out in 1845 to discover the Northwest Passage with the most advanced technology the British Empire could muster, and disappeared forever. Many rescue explorations found only scant evidence of the Expedition, and the mystery was finally solved only recently. This paper will explore four recent fictional works on Franklin’s expeditions, Stan Rogers’ song “Northwest Passage”, Margaret Atwood’s short story “The Age of Lead”, Rudy Wiebe’s A Discovery of Strangers, and John Wilson’s North with Franklin: the Lost Journals of James Fitzjames, to see how Franklin’s ghost has haunted the hopes and values of nineteenth-century, as well as modern, Canada.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitting article, which will be published (print and online) in journal ELOPE by Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). Author’s name will be evident in the article in journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in hands of the publisher.
- Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.