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Literary Criticism Canadian

The False Traitor

Louis Riel in Canadian Culture

by (author) Albert Braz

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2003
Category
Canadian, General, Post-Confederation (1867-)
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780802083142
    Publish Date
    Apr 2003
    List Price
    $49.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802047601
    Publish Date
    Apr 2003
    List Price
    $91.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442681255
    Publish Date
    Apr 2003
    List Price
    $91.00

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Description

The nineteenth-century Métis politician and mystic Louis Riel has emerged as one of the most popular - and elusive - figures in Canadian culture. Since his hanging for treason in 1885, the self-declared David of the New World has been depicted variously as a traitor to Confederation; a French-Canadian and Catholic martyr; a bloodthirsty rebel; a pan-American liberator; a pawn of shadowy white forces; a Prairie political maverick; a First Nations hero; an alienated intellectual; a victim of Western industrial progress; and even a Father of Confederation.

Albert Braz synthesizes the available material by and about Riel, including film, sculpture, and cartoons, as well as literature in French and English, and analyzes how an historical figure could be portrayed in such contradictory ways. In light of the fact that most aesthetic representations of Riel bear little resemblance not only to one another but also to their purported model, Braz suggests that they reveal less about Riel than they do about their authors and the society to which they belong. The most comprehensive treatment of the representations of Louis Riel in Canadian literature, The False Traitor will be a seminal work in the study of this popular Canadian figure.

About the author

Albert Braz is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Alberta. He is the author of The False Traitor: Louis Riel in Canadian Culture (2003) and Apostate Englishman: Grey Owl the Writer and the Myths (2015) and the co-editor, with Paul D. Morris, of National Literature in Multinational States (2022).

Albert Braz's profile page