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Articles

Volume 26, Number 2 (2001)

The Omnipresent Voice: Authorial Intrusion in Rudy Wiebe’s “Games for Queen Victoria”

Soumise
mars 25, 2010
Publié-e
2001-06-06

Résumé

Although Rudy Wiebe inserts himself directly into the narrative in his story "Where is the Voice Coming From?," he employs a different strategy in "Games for Queen Victoria." By "borrowing" the words of William F. Butler's The Great Lone Land, Wiebe employs an alternative, yet highly problematic narrative strategy. The way Wiebe quotes Butler is troubling both because Butler is unacknowledged -- a point raising issues about the ethics of literary quotation -- and also because these quotations are so extensive that Butlers stands as virtually a coauthor. Wiebe's almost exclusive focus on Butler contributes to the very Eurocentric discourse it so vociferously decries. Wiebe's story underlines the ambiguous relationship between a writer and his characters, and the way this relationship is mediated through the narrator.