1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910459196703321

Autore

Teuton Christopher B

Titolo

Deep waters [[electronic resource] ] : the textual continuum in American Indian literature / / Christopher B. Teuton

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Lincoln, : University of Nebraska Press, 2010

ISBN

1-283-05102-8

9786613051028

0-8032-3436-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (270 p.)

Disciplina

810.9/897

Soggetti

American literature - Indian authors - History and criticism

Indians in literature

Oral tradition in literature

Vision in literature

Indian philosophy - United States

Indians of North America - Intellectual life

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: diving into deep waters -- The oral impulse, the graphic impulse, and the critical impulse: reframing signification in American Indian literary studies -- N. Scott Momaday's The way to Rainy Mountain: vision, textuality, and history -- Trickster leads the way: a reading of Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart: the heirship chronicles -- Transforming "eventuality": the aesthetics of a tribal "word-collector" in Ray A. Young Bear's Black eagle child and Remnants of the first earth -- Interpreting our world: authority and the written word in Robert J. Conley's Real people series -- Epilogue: building ground in American Indian textual studies.

Sommario/riassunto

Weaving connections between indigenous modes of oral storytelling, visual depiction, and contemporary American Indian literature, Deep Waters demonstrates the continuing relationship between traditional and contemporary Native American systems of creative representation and signification. Christopher B. Teuton begins with a study of



Mesoamerican writings, Dine sand paintings, and Haudenosaunee wampum belts. He proposes a theory of how and why indigenous oral and graphic means of recording thought are interdependent, their functions and purposes determined by social, political, and cultural contexts. The center of this book examines four key works of contemporary American Indian literature by N. Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor, Ray A. Young Bear, and Robert J. Conley. Through a textually grounded exploration of what Teuton calls the oral impulse, the graphic impulse, and the critical impulse, we see how and why various types of contemporary Native literary production are interrelated and draw upon long-standing indigenous methods of creative representation. Teuton breaks down the disabling binary of orality and literacy, offering readers a cogent, historically informed theory of indigenous textuality that allows for deeper readings of Native American cultural and literary expression.