LE3 .A278 2009

2009

Wyile, Herb

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

English

English & Theatre Studies

Although postcolonial and ecocritical concerns have previously been considered more or less exclusively, by assessing the legacy of colonialism more holistically, scholars and critics are increasingly identifying the impacts of Western ideology on the environment and indigenous peoples as comparable and interconnected. Alongside the development of this theoretical convergence, authors of Canadian historical fictions are increasingly aligning postcolonial and ecocritical considerations in their retrospective reassessments of the impacts of European imperialism. John Steffler‟s The Afterlife of George Cartwright and Guy Vanderhaeghe‟s The Last Crossing are representative examples of the growing body of literature dramatizing the interrelated nature of the effects of colonialism for indigenous peoples and the non-human natural world. A number of critics, including Val Plumwood, Jeffry Myers and Cary Wolfe, have argued that the underlying ideology responsible for rationalizing the gratuitous exploitation and destruction of animals and their natural habitats is the same ideology justifying the racist treatment and genocidal killing of colonized peoples (Ashcroft 492). This thesis evaluates the extent to which the subjugation, exploitation and annihilation of both indigenous peoples and animals by characters of European heritage represent a manifestation of the colonizer‟s hierarchical and dualistic Judaeo-Christian beliefs. A case study of the postcolonial and ecocritical subtexts of Steffler‟s and Vanderhaeghe‟ novels serves to demonstrate the complementarity of these two critical approaches and the necessity of integrating postcolonial and ecocritical agendas in the context of colonialism. Steffler‟s The Afterlife of George Cartwright and Vanderhaeghe‟s The Last Crossing should not go uncontested by ecocritical and postcolonial critics; however, their revisionist critiques of colonial ideology and European dominance represent positive advancements towards “ecological sustainability and racial justice” (Myers 10).

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:556