Awakening Of Canadian Independence Awareness

Thomas· C· Haliburton(1796-1865)is “the first Canadian writer to establish an international reputation” and a great humorist in Canadian literary circle.His masterpiece The Clockmaker(1836)is a collection of 33 stories about the experience of an American clockmaker,Sam Slick,who peddles his clocks in British Nova Scotia colony and his profound criticism to social reality.Taking Nova Scotia as a miniature of pre-Confederation Canada in the 19 th Century,the novel portrays a multidimensional picture of living conditions in Nova Scotia where people confronted with oligarchy from British government,oppression from the rich and expansion from American hegemony.This thesis interprets The Clockmaker by employing the perspective of Greenblatt’s Cultural Poetics,aiming at exploring the awakening of Canadian independence awareness since the first half of the 19 th Century.Featuring by application of political perspective,Greenblatt’s Cultural Poetics generally explores the political consciousness and sense of rights in literary text.The theory surpasses the dichotomy mode of radical ideology and maintains that the relationship between domination and resistance is not a simple confrontation,but an interrelation of “subversion” and “containment”.This thesis holds that through anecdotes in each single story,The Clockmaker reflects the oppression in Nova Scotia colony under various “improvisation of power”and common people’s rebellious spirit striving to subvert authorities.The novel also expounds British Empire’s “containment” on the colonial subversive forces to consolidate the whole imperial system.Interpreting The Clockmaker from the perspective of Greenblatt’s Cultural Poetics will promote our understanding of social ideology in Canada before the founding of Canadian Confederation and evolution of its independence awareness.