Title: Circular concept of time in Lee Maracle's Ravensong and Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2020, vol. 46, iss. 1, pp. 195-212
Extent
195-212
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2020-1-9
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/142607
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The paper analyses two novels by Aboriginal Canadian writers, Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway and Ravensong by Lee Maracle. The main focus of the analysis is the representation of time in the texts. The paper examinates specific examples from the novels, where time is depicted as being circular rather than linear. Circular time is measured by cyclical events: passing seasons, migrations of animals, or births and deaths. The past determines the future and provides guidance for the present. The Western linear time may be therefore seen as less natural, a broken circle, stretched out in a straight line to accommodate for the precise though unrepeatable dates. The paper identifies the techniques and strategies used by the authors to depict the circular time in the novels. It also raises questions about the possible purposes of introducing the circular perception of time into a narrative.
References
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[2] Cahill, Thomas (2010) The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
[3] Cullingham, Haley (2016) "We have the same language, but definitely different rules": an interview with Lee Maracle. https://hazlitt.net/feature/we-have-same-language-definitely-different-rules-interview-lee-maracle Accessed on 13.02.2018.
[4] Dadey, Bruce (2003) Dialogue with Raven: Bakhtinian theory and Lee Maracle's Ravensong. Studies in Canadian Literature 28(1), 109–131.
[5] Donaldson, Mike (1996) The end of time? Aboriginal temporality and the British invasion of Australia. Time and Society 5(2): 187–207. | DOI 10.1177/0961463X96005002004
[6] Fee, Margery and Sneja Gunew (2004) From discomfort to enlightenment: An interview with Lee Maracle. Essays on Canadian Writing 83, 206–221.
[7] Fixico, Donald Lee (2013) The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge. New York: Routledge.
[8] Godard, Barbara (1990) The politics of representation: Some Native Canadian women writers. Canadian Literature 124(25), 183–225.
[9] Grant, Agnes (1990) Contemporary Native women's voices in literature. Canadian Literature 124(25), 124–132.
[10] Hampton, Eber (1993) Towards a redefinition of Indian education. Canadian Journal of Native Education 20(2), 261–310.
[11] Hancock, Brecker (2015) An interview with Lee Maracle. http://cwila.com/an-interviewwith-lee-maracle/ Accessed on 13.02.2018.
[12] Highway, Tomson (1998) Kiss of the Fur Queen. Canada: Doubleday Canada.
[13] Highway, Tomson (2003) Comparing mythologies. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. http://www.oralhistoryforum.ca/index.php/ohf/article/view/117
[14] Imani, Nikitah Okembe-RA (2012) The implications of Africa-centered conceptions of time and space for quantitative theorizing: Limitations of paradigmatically-bound philosophical meta-assumptions. Journal of Pan African Studies 5(4), 101–111.
[15] Maracle, Lee (1993) Ravensong: A Novel. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers.
[16] McLeod, Neal (2000) Cree narrative memory. Oral History Forum d'histoire Orale 19.
[17] Niehaus, Damien-Noah (2013) From mythical time to scientific time. The transformation of time in the Middle Ages. https://www.academia.edu/3649776/From_mythical_time_to_scientific_time._The_transformation_of_time_in_the_middle_ages. Accessed on 30.06.2018.
[18] Ong, Walter (2002) [1982] Orality and literacy. New York: Routledge.
[19] Ortiz, Simon J. (1981) Towards a national Indian literature: Cultural authenticity in nationalism. Ethnic Literature and Cultural Nationalism 8(2), 7–12.
[20] Silko, Leslie Marmon (1996) Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today. New York: Simon & Schuster, 48–59.
[21] Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake (2011) Dancing On Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: ARP Books.
[22] Smith, Lindsey Claire (2009) "With these magic weapons, make a new world": Indigenous centered urbanism in Tomson Highway's kiss of the fur queen. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies XXIX (1&2), 143–164.
[23] Whitrow, Gerald James (1989) Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day. Oxford: Oxford University Press.