The reworkings of the Western from the northern side of the Medicine Line: Caple’s In Calamity’s Wake, Vanderhaeghe’s The Englishman’s Boy and Stenson’s Lightning

Abstract

This article analyses the adaptation and appropriation of the Western genre in novels by three Canadian authors: Natalee Caple’s In Calamity’s Wake, Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Englishman’s Boy and Fred Stenson’s Lightning. All three novels revisit, re-interpret and subvert the myth of the Wild West by: focusing on historicity in the form of historiographic metafiction or historical fiction; differentiating between the Canadian and American Wild Wests; laying bare the mythologisation processes of the Wild West as a nation-making myth; and foregrounding characters ex-centric for the Western, such as women, First Nations, Canadians, and atypical cowboys. In this way, the novels contribute to the Canadian new Western genre.