From ”naked country” to ”sheltering ice”: Rudy Wiebe’s Revisionist Treatment of John Franklin’s First Arctic Narrative

• Main Author: Susan Birkwood
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Septentrio Academic Publishing 2008-02-01
• Series: Nordlit: Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur
• Subjects: Canadian literature; 1900-1999; Wiebe; Rudy (b. 1934); A Discovery of Strangers (1994); novel
• Online Access: https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/1161

Rudy Wiebe's A Discovery of Strangers (1994) offers a revisionist construction of Franklin's first expedition to find the North-West Passage, one that attempts to show the disparate views of the landscape held by the British explorers and the Yellowknife of the Coppermine region-one of the Dene peoples-and to sound a warning about the devastating effects of the arrogant will to dominate the environment. True to the conventions of historical fiction, Wiebe, makes Franklin, himself, a largely peripheral figure, choosing to focus on lesser known participants in the events of 1821.