Film and Drama in Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Englishman’s Boy

Canadian writer Guy Vanderhaeghe’s novel The Englishman’s Boy alternates between life on the wild frontier of Montana and Saskatchewan in the 1870s and the world of cinema in Hollywood in the 1920s in its exploration of how film and drama influence and construct the way we perceive history as it is expressed in fiction. Techniques from both genres are integrated into the novel, immersing readers in experiences from the characters’ pasts while exposing some of the limitations of examining historical fiction through any one discourse of expression. Vanderhaeghe’s novel suggests a longing to recreate rather than to represent historical experiences; it explores how a writer might bring a sense of the present moment, which is often conveyed so well in film and theater into the telling of the tale. The narrative addresses some of the challenges of writing self-reflexive fiction that investigates history, or what Linda Hutcheon calls historiographic metafiction,1 through its use of filmic and dramatic modes which are used to create a sense of immersion in two time periods that are removed from the reader’s contemporary present.