SOURCE: Gerson, Carole. “A Contrapuntal Reading of A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder.” Essays on Canadian Writing 56 (fall 1995): 224-35.

In the following essay, Gerson analyzes A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder within the context of postcolonialism, exploring the author's use of a multilayered framework of narratives and readers in his examination of imperialism.

Critical readers of James De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, written during the 1860s but not published until 1888 and likely left unfinished (Parks, Introduction xx-xxiii), are intrigued with the many textual and philosophical questions posed by this novel. Commentary stimulated by the New Canadian Library edition of 1969 focuses on De Mille's sources, the meaning of his satire, and the placement of this text within the fields of nineteenth-century popular and utopian fiction (see Gerson; Hughes; Keefer; Kilian; Kime; Parks, “Strange”; and Woodcock, “An Absence,” “De Mille”). Later...