Strange Terrain: Reproducing and Resisting Place-Myths in Two Contemporary Fictions of Newfoundland.

This essay examines how recent fiction by Wayne Johnston and Joan Clark counters or colludes with popular cultural constructions of Newfoundland as a "strange terrain" attractive to non-Newfoundlanders because of its associations with placemyths. How do Johnston's "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" and Clark's "Latitudes of Melt" position the nonlocal reader? As tourist? Friendly visitor? Alien invader? Whatever the case, both writers construct imagined geographies that encode and comment on the history and consequences of Newfoundland's mythologization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]