AUC PHILOLOGICA
AUC PHILOLOGICA

AUC Philologica (Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica) is an academic journal published by Charles University. It publishes scholarly articles in a large number of disciplines (English, German, Greek and Latin, Oriental, Romance and Slavonic studies, as well as in phonetics and translation studies), both on linguistic and on literary and cultural topics. Apart from articles it publishes reviews of new academic books or special issues of academic journals.

The journal is indexed in CEEOL, DOAJ, EBSCO, and ERIH PLUS.

AUC PHILOLOGICA, Vol 2016 No 1 (2016), 45–54

“I Have Been a Chippewa Born”: Anna Brownell Jameson’s Native Canadian Transformations

Klára Kolinská

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/24646830.2016.27
published online: 15. 06. 2016

abstract

The article discusses one of the canonical works of nineteenth-century Anglophone Canadian literature, a travelogue by Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860), a dedicated, if conservative, early feminist, who commented publicly on the issue of the rights of women in different social contexts. Her book Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838) represents a symptomatically Canadian genre oscillating between a classic travelogue and an extensive diary, and provides a detailed account of the author’s originally involuntary sojourn in Canada between December 1836 and August 1837, during which she became the first woman of European descent who, all by herself, accompanied only by Native guides, left the safety of the city, ventured into the wilderness of northern Ontario and encountered the Native inhabitants of her new country. Jameson welcomed these encounters as enriching opportunities for intercultural comparison, in which it was particularly the position of Native women that interested her. What makes Jameson’s text original is not the choice of genre but, rather, the fact that it provides an authentic literary testimony about the process of intercultural transformation of the authorial subject. Unlike her literary contemporaries, the sisters Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie, Jameson was not satisfied with merely recording her exploratory experience, but consciously strove to reach the inner substance of “otherness,” to achieve a kind of voluntary cultural marginalization which would facilitate the real, unmediated understanding of this otherness, as well as of herself. The article analyses the process of Jameson’s symbolic transformation into a “new Native Canadian,” the literary account of which became one of the foundation texts of Canadian national literary culture. „Narodila jsem se jako Čipevajka“: Kanadské domorodé transformace Anny Brownell Jamesonové Článek pojednává o jednom z kanonických děl kanadské anglofonní literatury devatenáctého století, cestopisu Anny Brownell Jamesonové (1794–1860), jedné z odhodlaných, byť konzervativních raných feministek, které se svým dílem veřejně vyjadřovaly k otázce postavení ženy v různých kulturních kontextech. Její kniha Zimní studie a letní putování po Kanadě (Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, 1838) představuje pro Kanadu příznačný žánrový typ na pomezí klasického cestopisu a rozsáhlého deníku a podává detailní záznam o autorčině původně nedobrovolném pobytu v Kanadě mezi prosincem 1836 a srpnem 1837, během něhož se stala první Evropankou, která zcela sama, jen s domorodými průvodci, opustila bezpečí města, vstoupila do divočiny severního Ontaria a setkala se s původními obyvateli své nové vlasti. Tato setkání vítala jako obohacující příležitosti k interkulturnímu srovnávání, na němž ji zajímala především situace domorodých žen. Na textu Jamesonové není originální jeho žánrové zařazení, ale skutečnost, že zprostředkovává autentické literární svědectví o procesu interkulturní transformace autorského subjektu. Na rozdíl od svých literárních současnic, sester Catharine Parr Traillové a Susanny Moodieové, se Jamesonová nespokojila s pouhým zaznamenáváním svých objevitelských zkušeností, nýbrž vědomě usilovala o proniknutí do samotné podstaty „jinakosti“, o jakousi dobrovolnou kulturní marginalizaci, která by jí umožnila skutečné, nezprostředkované pochopení této jinakosti i sebe sama. Článek analyzuje proces symbolické transformace Anny Brownell Jamesonové v „novou domorodou Kanaďanku“, jehož literární zpracování se stalo jedním ze základních textů kanadské literární kultury.

keywords: Anna Brownell Jameson; nineteenth-century Canadian literature; travelogue; national literature; Canadian Native culture

references (13)

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3. Freiwald, Bina Toledo (1986) "'Femininely Speaking ' : Anna Jameson ' s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada," in Amazing Space: Writing Canadian Women Writing, ed. Shirley Neuman and Smaro Kamboureli. Edmonton: Longspoon/NeWest Press.

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230 x 157 mm
periodicity: 3 x per year
print price: 150 czk
ISSN: 0567-8269
E-ISSN: 2464-6830

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