Yann Martel’s Life of Pi from Canadian Literary Perspectives

Abstract

This literary research paper primarily sees Yann Martel’s Life of Pi through the Canadian literary
lenses. It tries to identify the canons of Canadian literature and sees the reflection of it in Life of Pi as a
Canadian literary text.
Canadian Literature immerged from the earlier writings of travelling and exploring the unknown. It
came out of the diaries, journals, letters and other notes written by the visitors, travelers, and explorers of
British North America. Since then, this element has remained at its core in one or the other form of
Canadian Literature. As Northrop Frye observed “Canadian literature is haunted by the overriding question
of "Where is here?”; thus, metaphoric mapping of people and places became central to the evolution of the
Canadian literary imagination.” The established writers Margaret Atwood and Ruby Wiebe also reflect such
literary influences. Topographical literary works have always been at the centre of Canadian literature. The
subjects like the search of New World, encounters with the native people, nature, climate, unfamiliar
wildlife, landscape, the historical romances, local colors, globalization, multicultural world with multi ethnic
identity etc. have been recurring themes of Canadian literary world. The Canadian fiction writers have also
explored various literary genres like letters, diaries, biographies, biofictions, docufiction, metafiction.