Images of Louis Riel in Canadian Culture

This volume brings together essays that address the problematic Louis Riel, Canadian hero/villain, at the intersection of history and myth. Distinguished historians and literary critics include Rudy Wiebe, Mavor Moore, Desmond Morton, and others. Throughout, the emphasis is upon the shifting and, ultimately, indeterminate nature of representations of Riel, in newspaper, textbook, novel, poem, and play. Foregrounds Riel as initiating a process of mythification that runs from melodramatic 19th-century accounts through modernist literary re-evaluation to post-modernist focus on Riel as cultural icon. As the most comprehensive collection of essays on Riel and Canadian cultural self-examination yet to appear, the volume attests to the continuing vitality of investigation into this significant figure of Canadian history. With photographs.