Internalizing the landscape: Jane Urquhart's “A Map of Glass”

Abstract

This paper tries to show how the structure of the romance and the main themes, loss and search for identity, in A Map of Glass, Jane Urquhart’s latest novel, are determined by the characters’ disposition to internalize their Canadian landscape. In fact, this process of “emplacement” turns out to be the essential way to rediscover oneself and one’s family. In particular, in a country like Canada, this is still more comprehensible as its inhabitants are so closely related to a landscape, which, more than history, haunts their imagination and shapes their desire for survival and a sense of personal and national belonging.

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