Reinventing the Self in the Canadian Multicultural Space(s): Frederick Philip Grove’s Search for Identity

Authors

  • Rocco De Leo University of Salerno

Keywords:

space, Canada, landscape, experience, autobiography, fiction

Abstract

Space crucially influences how individuals who live (in) it construct their personal identities. This issue has been fundamental to the making of contemporary Canadian culture: by looking at or imagining their place, Canadian authors become the writers of two homelands who find their space in the global cross-border English-speaking culture as well as in the Canadian multi-ethnic or post-ethnic society. These authors become mapmakers as they introduce new sources of thought into a different space, and try to find their Self from a culture they have left behind. This essay takes into consideration the figure of Frederick Philip Grove, a cultivated European immigrant who left Berlin in 1909 to start a new life in North America and became a well-known Canadian fiction writer. The paper will concentrate on how he explored Western prairie pioneer life and its vibrant multi-cultural communities, and to what extent the Canadian natural and cultural realm Grove inhabited continuously influenced the definition of individuality he captures in his autobiography In Search of Myself (1946).

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Published

2017-11-17

Issue

Section

Special Issue Articles