Index of University Press Releases

April 4, 2008

Driedger’s essay published in The Journal of Narrative Theory

Derek Driedger

MITCHELL, S.D. — Derek Driedger, assistant professor of English at Dakota Wesleyan University, had an essay published in the most recent issue of JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory.

The essay, “Writing Isolation and the Resistance to Assimilation as ‘Imaginative Art’: Willa Cather’s Anti-Narrative in Shadows on the Rock,” details how Cather crafts an “anti-narrative” to counter writing standards set by journalism and realism, and to distance the death, violence, isolation, religion, and other themes with communal, subjective histories. The essay also argues the collective histories imaginatively suggest “how storytelling created the foundation for the Quebec community’s longstanding resistance to assimilation.”

“When critics generalize Shadows on the Rock as Cather’s novel of Canada, they do not consider how well Cather brings the reader back to a setting that is not Canada, not even Quebec, but New France,” said Driedger. “Through her writing style, Cather hints at some of the reasons why Quebec has always retained its ‘Distinct Society’ status.”

The essay includes an appendix which lists the 32 inset stories that create the bulk of the novel, along with the corresponding motif for each.

JNT is published by Eastern Michigan University. Published three times a year, JNT seeks to provide a forum for original essays that address the intersections between narrative, history, ideology, and culture, particularly those which rethink narrative theory.