The Studhorse Man: A Prairie Novel

Krupa Shah

doi:10.201411/clri.v8i1.577

Krupa Shah VIT University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.201411/clri.v8i1.577

Keywords: Canadian Literature, Studhorse Man, Prairie, Robert Kroetsch

Abstract

The paper examines the significance of the prairie in Canadian literature especially with reference to Canadian writer Robert Kroetsch’s novel The Studhorse Man. The prairie is both a metaphor and an experience and it is also the story. The prairie is also the alien and hostile land unrelenting to human footsteps; a land without history and the echoing warmth of myths told and re-told across generations. This paper argues that Robert Kroetsch’s novel The Studhorse Man is an exemplification of the prairie and that it is through its interrupted self-conscious narration that Kroetsch completes the act of naming and re-telling, thus claiming the prairie both as a source as well as a perpetrator of history and myth.

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Author Biography

Krupa Shah, VIT University

Krupa Shah is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Vellore Institute of Technology, (VIT), Chennai, India. Her research interests include the literary and cultural history of Gujarat, translation studies, and francophone literature among others. Krupa has been published in several journals and her most recent article examined questions of multilingualism and spatiality in the context of the former French colony of Pondicherry.

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