Contemporary Literary Criticism | Kroetsch, Robert (Vol. 132) - John Clement Ball (essay date Summer 1994)

John Clement Ball (essay date Summer 1994)

SOURCE: “Framing the American Abroad: A Comparative Study of Robert Kroetsch’s Gone Indian and Janet Frame’s The Carpathians,” in Canadian Literature, No. 141, Summer 1994, pp. 38-49.

[In the following essay, Ball discusses similarities in the treatment of colonialism in Gone Indian and Frame's The Carpathians.]

It is the paradox of Columbus’ perceptual moment that it cannot end. The moment of the discovery of America continues. Its reenactment becomes our terrifying test of greatness; we demand to hear again and always the cry into mystery, into an opening. We demand, of the risking eye, new geographies. And the search that was once the test of sailor and horse and canoe is now the test of the poet.

Kroetsch “Moment,” 25

When Christopher Columbus “discovered” America he was, like other explorers, acting as the agent...

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