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Articles

Volume 20, Number 1 (1995)

John Richardson's Byronic Hero in the Land of Cain

  • Michael Hurley
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1995-01-01

Abstract

Recalling and invoking Byron's achievements in poetry and drama, Richardson constructs in his novels a dark and disturbing New World wilderness haunted by shadowy Canadian Cains. Wacousta's essential lineaments are those of the Byronic hero/Gothic hero-villain. Unlike James Fenmore Cooper and Walter Scott's innocent and optimistic heroes, Wacousta is a paradoxical, passionate, problematic figure, an embodiment of Northrop Frye's Romantic tragic lover, wandering in a nightmarish Canadian borderland.