Roots and Routes in a Selection of Stories by Alistair MacLeod
Résumé
This essay analyses the relations between land and language in a selection of stories by MacLeod. Because returning and iteration, as well as crossing and analogy, combine spatial and linguistic displacements, both motifs confer a distinct cohesion on Macleod’s representation of Cape Breton. They also allow local place to enter in resonance with a national sense of space beyond the specificity of these stories’ regional setting. It will then be argued that the alleged universal value of MacLeod’s writing rests upon its contribution to the “imagined geographies” in which the nation, fragmented and diverse as it is, grounds its own existence.
