Roughing It in the Bush, The Graphic Novel

Graphic novels and comic books are no longer minor cultural artifacts which are produced to generate economic benefits, mostly consumed by young, not very literate, readers who do not hope to be educated but simply entertained. Quite on the contrary, authors such as Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman or Umberto Eco has vindicated the fundamental role these artistic manifestations play nowadays. The present paper analyzes Carol Shields and Patrick Crowe 2016 graphic novel adaptation of Susanna Moodie’s seminal book Roughing it in the Bush. In order to reach this goal, a brief theoretical state of the art is introduced. Consequently, the original writer and text are equally studied. Finally, the contemporary graphic novel adaptation is considered, explaining the genesis of the project as well and the similitudes and differences it shows when compared to the original work by Susanna Moodie.

IDENTITY AND SPACE IN THE EARLY WORKS OF MARGARET ATWOOD: SURFACING AND THE JOURNALS OF SUSANNA MOODIE

Od početka karijere 1961. godine, kad je objavila svoju prvu zbirku pesama Double Persephone (Dvostruka Persefona), Margaret Atvud (Margaret Atwood) zaokupljena je temama (ženskog) identiteta. Dela Atvudove bave se pitanjima ženske potrage za samospoznajom i uključuju traganje i psihološku transformaciju. U fiktivnom svetu Atvudove potraga se razmatra u kontekstu istorije, geografije, kulture, društva i ekologije, tako da tekst često predstavlja narativizaciju geografskog i socijalnog prostora Kanade, dok su faze i rezultati potrage predstavljeni prostornim metaforama kao specifičnim obeležjem teksta Atvudove. Ovaj esej prati inskripcije ljudske svesti u slikama pejzaža u ranim delima Atvudove sa ciljem da predstavi kako pejzaž stvara i reflektuje apstraktne koncepte mišljenja poput roda, identiteta i bića. U romanu Izranjanje (Surfacing) iz 1972. godine potraga za psihološkom celinom bića opisana je u formi fizičkog putovanja kroz divljinu, dok je u zbirci poezije The Journals of Susanna Moodie (Dnevnici Suzane Mudi), koja je objavljena 1970. godine, potraga data u obliku fiktivnih dnevničkih zapisa kanadske imigrantkinje. U pesmama ove zbirke Atvudova prati kako pejzaž preispituje identitet Mudijeve - posmatrača i putnika, i konačno prouzrokuje njenu psihološku transformaciju. Opisujući pejzaž stihovi govore o fazama transformacije Mudijeve i prihvatanju novog identiteta. Cilj ovog rada je da pokaže vezu između načina sagledavanja i opisivanja prirode i pejzaža i psiholoških stanja junakinja u romanu Izranjanje i zbirci poezije Dnevnici Suzane Mudi. Analiza odnosa između psihe i pejzaža utemeljena je u psihološkim teorijama Sigmunda Frojda (Sigmund Freud) i predavanjima Žaka Lakana (Jacques Lacan) iz oblasti psiholongvistike.

Fragmentary Aesthetics: Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill in the Canadian Bush

Chapter Three focusses on the semi-autobiographical accounts of settlement by Susanna Moodie and her sister, Catharine Parr Traill. It argues that the sketch form as practised by Moodie in Roughing it in the Bush (1852) and by Parr Traill in The Backwoods of Canada (1836), is an attempt to counter the tall tales of success circulating in booster literature. In this way, it takes on the concerns raised in the second chapter of what form is suitable for expressing the experiences of settlement. It argues that the sketch is intimately linked to the female experience of settlement: they could be written in the small hours of the night when the day-time chores were finished and children were in bed. Sketches thus capture a sense of these snatched fragments of time and simultaneously evoke the fragmented sensibility which comes when faced with such new surroundings.

Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush by C. Shields and P. Crowe

Shields, Carol and Patrick Crowe. Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush, adaptation by Willow Dawson, illustrated by Selena Goulding. Second Story Press, 2016.The long genesis of this graphic novel began more than two decades ago, when Governor General’s and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields began collaborating with Patrick Crowe to produce a screenplay based on Susanna Moodie’s classic account of pioneer life in early Victorian Upper Canada. Shields’ death in 2003 led Crowe to abandon the project, only to revive it a decade later in this illustrated format. Story editor Willow Dawson has extracted the most significant episodes from the screenplay, and Selena Goulding has provided running illustrations that fairly reflect the landscapes, buildings, home interiors, costumes, and technology of the period 1830–1867. Her style—not inappropriately—is reminiscent of the Classics Illustrated school of comic book art. This reviewer’s only criticism is the very occasional failure of the illustrations to accurately depict things referenced in the text.Appearing at a time when Canada celebrates 150 years of nationhood, this handsome production serves to provide older children and young adults with an appreciation of the hardships overcome by Canada’s pioneering women, such as Moodie, and her sister and fellow immigrant Catherine Parr Traill, whose very survival sometimes depended upon aid from their First Nations neighbours. As a succinct précis of Moodie’s classic memoir, it may even stimulate interest in reading the longer, original text. The Introduction provided by CanLit doyenne Margaret Atwood, alongside the content attributable to Carol Shields, render the book suitable not only for public and school libraries, but also for academic libraries and all serious collectors of those authors.Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill DistadHistorian and author Merrill Distad enjoyed a four-decade career building libraries and library collections.

Trans-Colonial Collaboration and Slave Narrative: Mary Prince Revisited

In 1831 in London, two formidable women met: Mary Prince, an ex-slave from Bermuda, who had crossed the Atlantic to a qualified freedom, and Susanna Strickland, an English writer. The narrative that emerged from this meeting was The History of Mary Prince, which played a role in the fight for slave emancipation in the British Empire. Prince disappeared once the battle was won, while Strickland emigrated to Upper Canada and, as Susanna Moodie, became an often quoted 19th century Canadian writer. Prince dictated, Strickland copied, and the whole was lightly edited by Thomas Pringle, the anti-slavery publisher at whose house the meeting took place.This is the standard account. In contesting this version, the paper aims to reinstate Moodie as co-creator of the collaborative Mary Prince text by considering multiple accounts of the meeting with Prince and to place the work in the context of Moodie’s pre- and post-emigration oeuvre on both sides of the Atlantic.