The Native in Literature: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives ed. by Thomas King, Cheryl Calver, and Helen Hoy, and: Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Literatures by Terry Goldie (review)

142 LETTERS IN CANADA 1989 by divine decree, it is God who is ultimately responsible for the existence ofevil. In spite ofhis severe criticism ofhis own century, Rousseau is seen in his major works to be more optimistic about the future than is sometimes claimed, partly because of the lessons of history, and partly because of his belief in his own divine vocation. And the undeniable discrepancies in Rousseau's theology as presented in several works, including La Nouvelle Heloose and Emile, cannot easily be dismissed. This is a strongly argued study. To support his positions, Rosenberg marshals evidence drawn from a wide variety of works: though some, notably the Confessions, necessarily receive more exposure than others, he ranges over the voluminous corpus of Rousseau's writings, citing some thirty-five titles, including the massive Correspondance. The discussion is placed in a broad intellectual context, with references to Plato, Machiavelli, Bossuet, Hobbes, Vico, Herder, and Voltaire, among others. Happily devoid of jargon, the text is characterized by an uncommon clarity of thought and expression. Throughout, the investigation is conducted with rigour, finesse, and probity. · The publisher's recent financial woes will not, it is hoped, preclude further distribution of this valuable book. An incisive contribution to Rousseau scholarship, it deserves wide circulation. Indeed, this volume is indispensable reading for anyone interested in Rousseau's thought. (WILLIAM HANLEY) Thomas King, Cheryl Calver, and Helen Hoy, editors. The Native in Literature: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives ECW Press. 232. $25.00; $15.00 paper Terry Goldie. Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Literatures MeGill-Queen's University Press. 271. $29.95 In his novel Homesickness, Australian author Murray Bail has his Australian tourists encounter an African tribe. As they are climbing back on board their bus, one of the tourists stops to ask a black boy his name. 'Oxford University Press,' he answers to the stunned tourist. Then she asks, 'What would you like to be, dear, when you grow up?' His answer: 'A tourist.' Reading through The Native in Literature (the proceedings of a 1985 University of Lethbridge conference) is like that exchange. The first essays examine how Euro-Canadians have, as Terry Goldie might put it, serniotized the indigene. The later ones give an indigenous perspective, where the European is an outsider and often a rnisinterpreter. There are two useful overviews. Leslie Monkman opposes Gutteridge's HUMANITIES 143 search for 'a more encompassing vision of phenomenal and noumenal worlds' to George Bowering's refusal to give us any 'reassuring models of intercultural translation' in his novel Burning Water. Gordon Johnston argues that symbolic figures of the indigene 'need to be challenged, deconstructed ... because the figures themselves have come to be regarded as real.' He asserts cogently and clearly that natives can still have a symbolic force only if this arises from representational accuracy, from 'who they are.' This prescription at least avoids what Marjorie Fee sees as 'the general lack of interest in Native culture or history: we want to be them, not to understand them.' She says we cannot 'kill off' the literary Indian - an unfair image which makes all revision imperial- because Canada is 'a marginal culture' and 'we are afraid that if we don't believe in Indians, we will have to become Americans.' Neat, but these terms need definitionwhat does 'believe in' mean? And what of their Indians? Like Robert Kroetsch, Eli Mandel is interested in 'the myth of marginality ... the borderline tale.' Mandel argues that the crossing of cultural boundaries may be accomplished only in silence or by silent gesture; but it can be prepared for and framed by the shapes of art, as he suggests when he quotes Kroetsch to the effect that the experience of an absence is itself an experience- even if it can't be put on paper, it can be framed. Angelika Maeser-Lemieux uses a 'Jungian and feminist liberationtheology model' to show that for Margaret Laurence the Metis embody 'the necessary but lost factor in the psyche without which no completion is possible.' While her reference to the 'Pocahontas Perplex' (princess and squaw) fits nicely into Goldie's categories of fear and...