1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910300000103321

Autore

Weaver-Hightower Rebecca

Titolo

Frontier Fictions : Settler Sagas and Postcolonial Guilt / / by Rebecca Weaver-Hightower

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2018

ISBN

3-030-00422-8

Edizione

[1st ed. 2018.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (282 pages)

Disciplina

823.92099287

820.935820971241

Soggetti

Literature   

America—Literatures

Comparative literature

Literature, Modern—19th century

Literature, Modern—20th century

Literature, Modern—21st century

Postcolonial/World Literature

North American Literature

Comparative Literature

Nineteenth-Century Literature

Contemporary Literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. The Settler Saga -- 2. Guilt and the Settler-Indigene Relationship -- 3. Guiltscapes of the Homestead, Village, and Fort -- 4. Settler Guilt and Animal Allegories -- 5. The Lost Settler Child.

Sommario/riassunto

This book compares the nineteenth-century settler literatures of Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United States in order to examine how they enable readers to manage guilt accompanying European settlement. Reading canonical texts such as Last of the Mohicans and Backwoods of Canada against underanalyzed texts such as Adventures in Canada and George Linton or the First Years of a British Colony, it demonstrates how tropes like the settler hero and his



indigenous servant, the animal hunt, the indigenous attack, and the lost child cross national boundaries. Settlers similarly responded to the stressors of taking another’s land through the stories they told about themselves, which functioned to defend against uncomfortable feelings of guilt and ambivalence by creating new versions of reality. This book traces parallels in 20th and 21st century texts to ultimately argue that contemporary settlers continue to fight similar psychological and cultural battles since settlement is never complete.