From Vancouver Island to the City of Troy : Prophecy, Heroism, and Indigenous Classical Reception in Catherine Knutsson's Shadows Cast by Stars

Abstract

Catherine Knutsson's (Métis) YA novel Shadows Cast by Stars (2012) is a rich compendium of storytelling and myth with different cultural backgrounds which enter a dialogue in the novel's plot. This article is particularly concerned with the intersection of Indigenous storyworlds of the Pacific Northwest and narratives of Greco-Roman antiquity, specifically stories surrounding the Trojan war, in Knutsson's novel. To contextualize and frame this discussion the article offers some preliminary thoughts on Indigenous classical reception in general and its relation to the Pacific Northwest in particular, before taking a closer look at Shadows Cast by Stars. In this analysis, special attention is paid to themes of prophecy and heroism and how the intersecting frameworks of classical referentiality and Indigenous storyworlds affect the characterization of the novel's protagonist, sixteen-year-old Cassandra Mercredi. I argue that Knutsson's text uses this complexly transcultural, dialogical narrative framework in ways which serve to revise simplistic notions of heroism as a masculinist ideal and to position Cassandra as a heroic young woman who embodies empowering visions of Indigenous futurity, among other things by building meaningful relationships to diverse stories. In addition, I contend that Knutsson's take on classical reception reconfigures the ruptured relationship between Indigenous lands and cultures of the Pacific Northwest on the one hand, and Greco-Roman stories on the other, along the lines of what Brooke Holmes calls "elective sympathy" (2016, 280).