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Settler belonging facing other-than-human-actors: Margaret Boyce, ‘Taking Cereals Seriously in Martha Ostenso’s Wild Geese’, Canadian Literature, 234, 2017

02Aug18

Abstract: This articles proposes a fresh reading of the classic Canadian novel, Wild Geese, by Martha Ostenso. By way of Anna Tsing’s discussion of the cross-species influence of crops on the development of Western agricultural societies, I reconceive of the novel’s surly antagonist Caleb as beholden to the fruits of his labour. I thereby develop a reading of Ostenso’s frontier narrative that takes seriously the role of other-than-human actors in the novel, which counters scholarship that ascribes solely symbolic status to the novel’s plantlife, while also revealing the novel’s instrinsic anxiety regarding the limitations of settler belonging.


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