Europe through the Prism of Japan: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Jacques Proust , Elizabeth Bell
ine how representations of Newfoundland challenge the notion that gendered metaphors of possession were the only way in which the English imagined their relationship to their colonies. Peter A. Goddard analyzes the Jesuits' changing representations of Canada, how these changes were influenced by the cultural and intellectual climate in France, and how the Jesuits' experience of Canada influenced their own conceptions of themselves and their order. The five important papers in the volume's final section, "Decentring at Work," examine "in close detail . . . interactions between the New World, as it was represented by 'the north part of America,' and the evolving experience of those who explored or settled here" (Warkentin and Podruchny, 14). These essays and others in the volume showcase what can be achieved when scholars address the interrelationship between Europeans and native peoples. In this last section, Lynn Berry offers a particularly provocative assessment of the tone and content of Pierre Boucher's 1664 natural history of Canada as bearing witness to the personal "hybridization" of this twenty-seven-year resident of Canada, and the discursive "hybridization" of his representation of Canada's flora and fauna (224, 227). Warkentin and Podruchny's rich and wonderfully-focused volume, however, is organized so that the reader is constantly reminded of that absent and perhaps unrecoverable "history of the relationships between Amerindians among themselves" (Delage and Warren, 314), endowing this collection finally with an intellectual honesty and openness to engagement which make it a timely and exciting intervention in postcolonial studies. MARIE H. LOUGHLIN Okanagan University College