Negotiating History and Culture
Transculturation in Contemporary Native American Fiction
©2001
Thesis
VIII,
230 Pages
Summary
Native American cultures have always succeeded to varying degrees in negotiating a balance between their tribal cultural heritage and the ‘dominant culture.’ In the present study, the meeting between these cultures is not interpreted as a clash, but as a cultural encounter in a contact zone. The concept of transculturation serves as a theoretical model to analyze how history and culture are fictionally constructed in contemporary American Indian literature. Developing a dynamic, dialogic, and reciprocal relationship between their native worldviews and literary techniques, on the one hand, and those of the larger society, on the other, the writers examined in this study – Anna Lee Walters, Diane Glancy, James Welch, Linda Hogan, Thomas King, and Gerald Vizenor – stress the processual nature of culture. These writers demonstrate that transculturation functions as a major strategy of survival for Native Americans in the past and in the present.
Details
- Pages
- VIII, 230
- Publication Year
- 2001
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783631371510
- Language
- English
- Published
- Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2001. VIII, 230 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG