The Mapping of Center and Periphery, and the Geography of Otherness

Abstract

Some literatures, like Canadian literature, may be considered minor because Canada is not a major power. But in reality, Canadian literature and other literatures, large or small, are part of a cultural history that is not merely local or even national, but international. The territories of culture and literature in literal or metaphorical terms shift over time. Using a comparative method, this article examines texts—such as The Saga of Eric the Red and works by Columbus, Verrazzano, Jeannette C. Armstrong, Marie Annharte Baker and Carrie Best—to demonstrate the shifting boundaries of time and space and to explore the connections between cultures and literatures in Canada, Europe and the Atlantic and international worlds as part of a longstanding globalization. The article demonstrates that the hybridity resulting from cross-cultural contact and colonization typically blurs the distinction between center and periphery, revealing the historical fluidity of the political boundaries on which the concepts of national and world literatures are based. In doing so, it focuses on how North America, particularly Canada, and the historical process of its discovery, settlement, and colonization have connected this region to other parts of the world.