From Fact to Fiction – An Introduction to the Mythology of Ice Hockey in Canadian Life and Literature
The title of Alice Munro’s Who do you think you are? could just as easily be asked of Canada, without eliciting an easy answer. In ethnic, linguistic, even geographical terms, Canada is hardly homogeneous. Because of this, we can only dream of a unified identity; we are, as Leonard Cohen writes in B...
| Published in: | ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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Založba Univerze v Ljubljani / University of Ljubljana Press
2004
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| Online Access: | https://journals.uni-lj.si/elope/article/view/3280 https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.1.1-2.81-94 |
| Summary: | The title of Alice Munro’s Who do you think you are? could just as easily be asked of Canada, without eliciting an easy answer. In ethnic, linguistic, even geographical terms, Canada is hardly homogeneous. Because of this, we can only dream of a unified identity; we are, as Leonard Cohen writes in Beautiful Losers, condemned to “nightmares of identity.” If Canada is too complex for a uniform national identity, one derived from a convenient mythology and distilled into simple symbols, it often seems we have yet to realize it. We long for a mythology, even a modern, and blatantly constructed one. In contemporary Canadian society, ice hockey has filled that symbolic role, serving as a mythology that binds a fragmented people. This paper examines the role of ice hockey as a mythologized symbol of Canadian unity in literature, and questions the appropriateness of that usage. Vprašanje, ki ga je zapisala Alice Munro v naslovu knjige Who do you think you are?, bi lahko zastavili Kanadčanom, vendar ne bi dobili preprostega odgovora. V etničnem, jezikovnem ali geografskem smislu Kanada ni homogena dežela. Samo sanjamo lahko o enotni identiteti, saj so po besedah Leonarda Cohena Kanadčani obsojeni na nočne more o identiteti. Kanada je preveč kompleksna, da bi imela enotno nacionalno identiteto, takšno ki izvira iz ustrezne mitologije in je pretvorjena v enostavne simbole. Toda zdi se, da Kanadčani hrepenijo po mitologiji, čeprav je ta moderna in jo morajo sami ustvariti. V sodobni kanadski družbi služi hokej kot mitologija, ki veže mozaik ljudi. Članek proučuje vlogo hokeja na ledu kot simbola združevanja Kanade v literaturi ter podvomi v primernost njegove uporabe. |
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