Envoicing Silent Objects: Art and Literature at the Site of the Canadian Landscape - Richard Brock

Oct 15, 2026

Explores how visual landscape painting and literary narrative intersect in Canadian place-making, arguing that works associated with the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson often present an icy, silent world that conceals histories of conquest, dispossession, and colonial erasure. Traces scholarly moves toward “visual culture” and counter-discourse, then uses ekphrasis to show how literature can unlock suppressed narratives. Applies these ideas to Margaret Atwood’s “Death by Landscape.”

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

AccessFree to download

Intersection of art, literature, and place

Silence in landscape representation

Visual culture and suppressed narratives

Counter-discourse and situating the writer

Ekphrasis as a critical technique

Application to Atwood’s “Death by Landscape”

Envoicing Silent Objects: Art and Literature at the Site of the Canadian Landscape Richard Brock The conjunction of art, literature and place in this special issue provides an occasion for considering the intersection of visual art and the literary narrative at the site of that most definitive of place-markers in the history of Canadian nationhood, the landscape painting. As characterized by the iconic, overtly nationalist works of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven in the early part of the twentieth century, Canadian place consists, very precisely, of landscape—no more, no less. To gaze into a painting by Thomson, Harris, Lismer, Varley, Macdonald or Jackson is to be confronted by an icy, forbidding and—crucially—silent world. If there is any trace of humanity to be found here, it can perhaps be located only in the eerily humanoid form of a windswept tree, a stand-in for the pioneer-settler engaged in ceaseless combat with a wilderness every bit as white and hardy as he. This tree seems perpetually on the brink of succumbing to the elements that continually besiege it, and we can be certain that, were it to fall, it would make no sound. In isolation, such representations of landscape guard their silence jealously, burying the voices and histories of entire peoples in a static, atemporal moment that is seemingly as inhospitable to narrative as to the unequipped traveller. In recent decades, however, the apparently self-evident atemporality of the visual artwork has begun to unravel, at least in scholarly circles: paintings now belong to the realm of “visual culture,” an interdisciplinary domain that permits the discursive and narrative properties of visual art to be laid open to critical scrutiny. For a generation, critics have been striving to return the silenced voices of Canada’s dispossessed First Nations peoples to the Group of Seven’s paintings, charting the long and complex history of complicity between landscape representation and the ideological and material apparatuses of colonialism and settlement, from the declaration of a terra nullius to legitimize initial settlement, to the emergence of a white settler national identity. Thanks to these critics, most contemporary scholars now recognize that, if we are to be moved by the timeless, statuesque, sculptural forms of the Group’s finest works, we must also acknowledge that they are replete with suppressed narratives of conquest and erasure: that this is a body of work whose ideological thrust closely parallels the representative systems of domination characteristic of imperialist discourses the world over.1 It is not my intention here merely to ask again which voices, presencesand narratives are silenced, suppressed and excluded by the sense of Canadian place promoted by the Group of Seven—though this question, of course, must guide any responsible investigation into the Group’s enduring legacy. Rather, I want to examine some of the ways in which art and literature converge upon the site of this landscape, generating an ekphrastic con- 50 Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 13 (2), 2008 ception of place which reminds us constantly that every framed, static view of a landscape represents a story house, a repository of narratives concerning all those peoples who have inhabited this place, interacted with it, or claimed it as their own. To this end, I seek first to explore some of the narratives consigned to this repository, and then to consider how they are accessed, opened up and reconfigured in one specific literary work: Margaret Atwood’s complex short story “Death by Landscape,” from her 1991 collection Wilderness Tips. Two principles will guide me in my exploration. The first is the notion of counter-discourse , a term used in postcolonial theory to describe an engagement with a colonialist text by a postcolonial writer. For the postcolonial writer, a counter-discursive engagement is one that operates within but against the prevailing discou

FAQs

Why does the article link Canadian place to landscape painting?

It treats landscape as the defining place-marker in Canadian nationhood and analyzes how landscape representations structure what can be seen, heard, or narrated.

What problem does the article identify with the “silence” of visual landscape artworks?

It argues that silence hides voices and histories, burying accounts of entire peoples in an atemporal moment that resists narrative.

How do counter-discourse and ekphrasis guide the analysis of Atwood’s story?

Counter-discourse frames engagement within and against imperial narratives, while ekphrasis explains how literary description of visual art can give the artwork a temporal, discursive space where suppressed meanings are reconfigured. The approach is then used to examine Atwood’s “Death by Landscape.”

Oct 15, 2026

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