A comparative post-colonial reading of Kristjana Gunnars' The prowler and Robert Kroetsch's What the crow said

Abstract

Decolonisation does become problematic when the initial binary power structure is fused, as is the case in white settler societies such as Canada, Austria, and New Zealand. However, working within such a context does create the problem of determining what makes up post-colonial writing. Post-colonialism, then, becomes a theoretical stance, a reading and writing strategy. From this starting point, I chose to read two postmodern Canadian texts, Kristjana Gunnars' The Prowler and Robert Kroetsch's What the Crow Said, within a Second World post-colonial perspective. Through a three-stage reading strategy (which reads both novels as evolving from an initial colonial state of mind, to a stage of discovery, and then finally to a stage of appropriation within a postcolonial mode of being), I have approached these works outside of mainstream postmodern criticism and highlighted their post-colonial aspects."--Résumé abrégé par UMI.