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UBC Theses and Dissertations
Everything becomes island : Gulf Islands writing and the construction of region Rayner, Anne Patricia
Abstract
Literary conventions in the writing of the Gulf Islands of the British Columbia coast have “invented” the islands as a distinct region. Lying at the centre of the Strait of Georgia urban region, the islands function as objects of pastoral desire: in representing escape from the city, they are perceived as “natural” by contrast. The landscapes of the Gulf Islands posit a version of “nature” radically different from that common elsewhere in Canada. The protected waters of inland sea and archipelago, benign climate, naturally-occurring alternation of forest and meadow, and defining liminal zone of the beach make the local landscape seem inherently pastoral. As does the pastoral mode, the tropes of discovery and settlement provide convenient, familiar frames for neo-colonial experience of nature and representation of landscape. Using a broadly historical approach, the thesis traces the longevity of local landscape conventions since Spanish exploration of the islands in 1791 and 1792. Rapid population growth intensifies the dominance of the pastoral, while tropes of discovery and settlement give newcomers and established residents the rhetorical means to claim origins in the Gulf Islands. The need to establish origins shapes community politics, which are codified in the Islands Trust, the provincially-funded body that oversees land-use issues in the islands. The thesis consists of ten chapters, the first two of which examine local conventions for defining Gulf Islands space and for writing the history of the islands. Chapters Three and Four discuss the tropes discovery and settlement, respectively, and Chapter Five focusses on characteristic narratives used to express the notion of “Gulf Island.” Chapters Six through Eight revisit the themes of the previous three chapters, inverting the order of discovery and settlement in the second cycle to reflect the ahistorical, simultaneous invocation of these ideas locally. Whereas Chapter Five demonstrates how one Gulf Island version of pastoral dominates the region’s presentation of itself in imaginative writing, Chapter Eight examines the consequences for local narrative when events cannot be articulated within the pastoral mode. As a counterpoint to analysis, in Chapter Four, of how settlement functions as a rhetorical device in Gulf Islands writing, Chapter Six examines aspects of the physical, settled landscape--specifically architecture and the ornamentation of holiday homes and homesites with objects gathered from the beach--as deliberate expressions of indigenousness. In a similar pairing, Chapter Seven examines nostalgic uses of the “discovery” trope intended to express local space, extending the scope of Chapter Three, which explicates attitudes toward the islands expressed through two “original” European voyages of discovery in the islands. Chapters Nine and Ten discuss the role of intertexts in Gulf Island writing: only very recently has the idea of a Gulf Islands “canon”--as indicated by intertextual references between Gulf Islands texts--become current, Gulf Islands writing continues to rely on intertextual references to imperial foundation texts to define, and determine significance in, local landscape. The “sketch” form, which permeates all genres and modes of landscape representation in the islands, in itself articulates the “natural” and thus expresses the condition of “Gulf Island.”
Item Metadata
Title |
Everything becomes island : Gulf Islands writing and the construction of region
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1995
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Description |
Literary conventions in the writing of the Gulf Islands of the British Columbia coast
have “invented” the islands as a distinct region. Lying at the centre of the Strait of Georgia
urban region, the islands function as objects of pastoral desire: in representing escape from
the city, they are perceived as “natural” by contrast. The landscapes of the Gulf Islands posit
a version of “nature” radically different from that common elsewhere in Canada. The
protected waters of inland sea and archipelago, benign climate, naturally-occurring alternation
of forest and meadow, and defining liminal zone of the beach make the local landscape seem
inherently pastoral. As does the pastoral mode, the tropes of discovery and settlement
provide convenient, familiar frames for neo-colonial experience of nature and representation
of landscape.
Using a broadly historical approach, the thesis traces the longevity of local landscape
conventions since Spanish exploration of the islands in 1791 and 1792. Rapid population
growth intensifies the dominance of the pastoral, while tropes of discovery and settlement
give newcomers and established residents the rhetorical means to claim origins in the Gulf
Islands. The need to establish origins shapes community politics, which are codified in the
Islands Trust, the provincially-funded body that oversees land-use issues in the islands.
The thesis consists of ten chapters, the first two of which examine local conventions
for defining Gulf Islands space and for writing the history of the islands. Chapters Three and
Four discuss the tropes discovery and settlement, respectively, and Chapter Five focusses on
characteristic narratives used to express the notion of “Gulf Island.” Chapters Six through
Eight revisit the themes of the previous three chapters, inverting the order of discovery and
settlement in the second cycle to reflect the ahistorical, simultaneous invocation of these ideas
locally. Whereas Chapter Five demonstrates how one Gulf Island version of pastoral
dominates the region’s presentation of itself in imaginative writing, Chapter Eight examines
the consequences for local narrative when events cannot be articulated within the pastoral
mode. As a counterpoint to analysis, in Chapter Four, of how settlement functions as a
rhetorical device in Gulf Islands writing, Chapter Six examines aspects of the physical, settled
landscape--specifically architecture and the ornamentation of holiday homes and homesites
with objects gathered from the beach--as deliberate expressions of indigenousness. In a
similar pairing, Chapter Seven examines nostalgic uses of the “discovery” trope intended to
express local space, extending the scope of Chapter Three, which explicates attitudes toward
the islands expressed through two “original” European voyages of discovery in the islands.
Chapters Nine and Ten discuss the role of intertexts in Gulf Island writing: only very
recently has the idea of a Gulf Islands “canon”--as indicated by intertextual references
between Gulf Islands texts--become current, Gulf Islands writing continues to rely on
intertextual references to imperial foundation texts to define, and determine significance in,
local landscape. The “sketch” form, which permeates all genres and modes of landscape
representation in the islands, in itself articulates the “natural” and thus expresses the condition
of “Gulf Island.”
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Extent |
9455172 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-04-27
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0088407
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
1995-11
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.