Western culture may have enshrined North as a touchstone by which all other directions are defined, but the North is not one but a number of Netherlands; like all frontiers, the North is, in its essence, imaginative, magicked out of ice and snow, muskeg and tundra. Storytelling is its generative principle, the activity through which the North and Northerners call themselves into being. In essays on topics ranging from the Aboriginal justice system in Canada to the search for the Northwest Passage to the cultural paradigms of medieval Iceland, The Fictional North examines stereotypes and iconic images of the North, the relationship of North to South, and ethnographic and fictional models of Northerness. This diversity of subjects and methodologies not only introduces readers to the diversity found above the 53rd Parallel, but also reflects the catholicity of the North itself. Interdisciplinary and timely, The Fictional North offers insights into the North's past as well as its present to those interested in circumpolar issues and the areas of culture, literature, history, film, sociology, and education.
About the Author: John Butler, born in England and educated there and in Canada, specialises in the intellectual history of the seventeenth century with a particular interest in travel writing. He has taught at universities in Nigeria, Canada and Japan, and has published several books on Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Studies. He is currently an Associate Professor of Humanities at the University College of the North in The Pas, Canada, and is presently editing Sir Paul Rycaut's History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire. Sue Matheson, raised in northern Alberta, specializes in American literature, popular culture and film. She has taught at universities throughout Western Canada and has published in the areas of American film, American popular culture, Canadian literature, Children's literature, and detective fiction. Sue is currently an Associate Professor in the Area of Humanities at the University College of the North in The Pas, Canada, and is presently editing a volume of essays, Love in Western Film and Television, which will be released by Palgrave Press.