Deep Time and Settler Literary Regionalism in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm and Willa Cather's O Pioneers!

The article explores the concept of deep time in settler literary regionalism through a comparative analysis of Olive Schreiner's "The Story of an African Farm" and Willa Cather's "O Pioneers!" The authors use geological and evolutionary theories to depict Indigenous peoples as embodying deep time, reconciling settler colonial tensions. Schreiner and Cather's novels symbolically displace Indigenous identities onto the landscape, erasing Indigenous presence while affirming settler claims to the land through deep-time narratives. The authors' engagement with deep time reflects a larger pattern of settler colonial domination and Indigenous erasure, highlighting the complexities of regional fiction in negotiating temporal scales and cultural identities. [Extracted from the article]