The Borders: a novella
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Date
2016
Authors
Braun, Sasha Danielle
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Abstract
This creative writing thesis, a novella, investigates the borderlands of the Canadian West during the frontier and settlement periods. This novella aims to unsettle settlement, to confound narrative cohesion in settlement space through an abundance of voice and language, of conflict and narrative negotiation. It incorporates Southern Gothic elements and fragmented narrative, using William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient as models, in its representation of erasures of race, sexualities, and gender in settlement space. It sees prairie as constructed space where representations of open-ness figuratively clear the land of subjectivities and conflicts which complicate myths of peaceful expansion. It sees such erasure as never total, that those who remain speak from their ephemeral positions, haunting the cohesion of nation-building narrative.
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Keywords
Creative writing, Prairie writing, William Faulkner, Southern gothic, Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, Absalom, Absalom!, Borders, Border culture, Frontier, Novella, Fiction