Reluctance, protest, and hybridity : environmental engagement in memoirs from British Columbia

Vol.36,No.2(2010)

Richard Pickard

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/105064

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Abstract
While practitioners and readers of nature writing have long recognized the genre's affiliation with memoir, the recognition has not gone the other way. In British Columbia, a hybrid subgenre has developed that deliberately blends the two existing genres, starting from the province's dual self-definition as wilderness and resource base and emphasizing the perilous condition of nature in BC. Texts that can be assigned to this subgenre participate to different degrees in the parent genres, with differing allegiances to the memoir form in particular, but they each exploit the potentials of formal hybridity with a particular focus on protest, on social or cultural change, and on connecting the human and the natural. Works discussed in this essay include Tim Bowling's The Lost Coast, Brian Fawcett's Virtual Clearcut, and Harold Rhenisch's Tom Thomson's Shack.

Keywords:
environment; memoir; nature writing; ecocriticism; labour

Pages:
123–138
References

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