Content Details | NUML Online Research Repository

Title RETRIEVAL OF MYTHS IN NATIVE AMERICAN WRITINGS: A NEW HISTORICIST STUDY

Author(s) QASIM SHAFIQ

Abstract ABSTRACT Thesis Title: Retrieval of Myths in Native American Writings: A New Historicist Study The difference in the concept of history – ceremonial and chronological – between Native American and Eurocentric viewpoints grows the debate on the in/valid representation of the ‘historicity’ or social and cultural embedment in Native American literature and ‘textuality’, the access to the historical credibility and intelligibility, of Native American history. The ‘transcendental signified’ of Eurocentrism however privileges the Eurocentric view on history, hence canonizes western second-hand knowledge about the firsthand experience of Native Americans. In the wake of civilization, the Euro-American scholars overruled Native American cultural stories and historiography and determined that Native Americans had no culture or history. In resistance, Native American literary and non-literary writers assembled Native American mythical stories in their writings to [re]construct their cultural history. Also, these aboriginal stories describe the misconceptions about Native American history. According to new historicism, these mythical stories inscribed in Native American literary and non-literary texts are credible as they are the productions, hence the producers, of aboriginal culture wherein they were told or written. In this regard, Native American literary texts, Tracks (1988) by Louise Erdrich and Ceremony (1977) by Leslie Marmon Silko, and non-literary texts, God is Red (1973) and The World We Used to Live In (2006) by Vine Deloria Jr., (re)produce Native American history from pre-Columbian time to late 20th century as the stories and reports inscribed in them are the productions of this period of North America. The textual (individual) and co-textual (collective) thick description of the mythical stories and historical documentation inscribed in delimited texts exercise: how much Tracks and Ceremony are the productions of the culture in which they were written; to what extent God Is Red and The World We Used To Live In mythistoricize North American aboriginal history; and how much the co-textual (collective) study of these stories would have a better understanding of Native American cultural history.

Type Thesis/Dissertation

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2021-03-11

Subject English Literature

Publisher

Contributor(s)

Format

Identifier

Source

Relation

Coverage

Rights