Dreams of fiery stars [[electronic resource] ] : the transformations of Native American fiction / / Catherine Rainwater

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910781881603321
• Autore: Rainwater Catherine <1953->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1999
• ISBN: 1-283-21068-1; 9786613210685; 0-8122-0020-9
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (241 p.)
• Collana: Penn studies in contemporary American fiction
• Disciplina: 813/.540897
• Soggetti: American fiction - Indian authors - History and criticism; American fiction - 20th century - History and criticism; Indians of North America - Intellectual life; Indians in literature
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [197]-211) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Prologue. A Universe Perfused with Signs -- Chapter One. Acts of Deliverance: Narration and Power -- Chapter Two. Imagining the Stories: Narrativity and Solidarity -- Chapter Three. Re-Signing the Self: Models of Identity and Community -- Chapter Four. They All Sang as One: Refiguring Space-Time -- Chapter Five. All the Stories Fit Together: Intertextual Medicine Bundles and Twins -- Epilogue. All We Have Are Stories: Semiosis and Regeneration -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
• Sommario/riassunto: Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1999Since the 1968 publication of N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, a new generation of Native American storytellers has chosen writing over oral traditions. While their works have found an audience by observing many of the conventions of the mainstream novel, Native American written narrative has emerged as something distinct from the postmodern novel with which it is often compared.In Dreams of Fiery Stars, Catherine Rainwater examines the novels of writers such as Momaday, Linda Hogan, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, and Louise Erdrich and contends that the very act of writing narrative ; imposes constraints upon these authors that are foreign to Native American tradition. Their works amount to a break with—and a transformation of—American Indian storytelling.The book focuses on the agenda of social and cultural regeneration encoded in contemporary Native American narrative, and addresses key questions about how these works achieve their overtly stated political and revisionary aims. Rainwater explores the ways in which the writers "create" readers who understand the connection between storytelling and personal and social transformation; considers how contemporary Native American narrative rewrites Western notions of space and time; examines the existence of intertextual connections between Native American works; and looks at the vital role of Native American literature in mainstream society today.