| This dissertation employs the tools of ecocritical scholarship to investigate the paradoxical role of the discourse of wilderness in the marketing of Jasper National Park. It proposes that wilderness, as both a cultural construct and a concept that purportedly stands outside of culture, is an untenable conceptualization of the natural world, particularly in places as heavily managed and shaped by human design as the national parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Furthermore, it posits that wilderness spaces ultimately resist static textual representations because their mutability and constant evolution are integral to their conceptual existence.; The introduction establishes the theoretical framework of the study, providing a survey of recent trends in ecocritical scholarship. Rather than dedicate itself to one ecocritical school to the exclusion of others, this dissertation borrows critical tools from conservative and post-modern ecocritical schools. Chapter I surveys the historical roots of the aesthetic concepts of the sublime and the picturesque as they occur in the earliest literary records of the Jasper areas, particularly in the journals and travel narratives of David Thompson, Peter Fidler, the Earl of Southesk, and Mary Schaffer respectively. Chapter II investigates the paradoxical marketing strategies deployed by the Grand Trunk Pacific, Canadian Northern, and Canadian National railway companies in their efforts to draw tourists to Jasper. The third and fourth chapters apply the critique of wilderness discourse set out in the first two chapters to policy documents, legislation, and other governmental grey matter relating to Jasper, covering a broad historical range, from the inception the concept of Canadian national parks in 1885 to the present day, with particular emphasis on the career of the first commissioner of national parks, James Bernard Harkin. Chapter V problematizes contemporary conflations of wilderness discourse and nationalist rhetoric, particularly as these conflations erase the racial oppression that attends the national parks' histories. The conclusion offers an analysis of the museological presentation of particular scenic features in Jasper, and critiques contemporary discourse that paints national parks as global biological repositories that implicitly are unaffected by anthropocentric ecological destruction. |
