Introduction to American
Literature.
Historic background
Early American Literature:
Brief Outline.
American studies
Foundation of America
1.
2.
3.
The discourse of ‘America’
Columbus: history founded in myth
Is there an early American literature?
Meanings of ‘America’
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The United States (but at what stage in its
development?)
A continent
America: North, South, and Middle
Freedom, democracy, opportunity,dream
World power, empire
Nation of immigrants
The idea of America
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A place where gold can be found
(Columbus, and other Hispanic and Italian
explorers)
Eden, or Paradise; the Promised Land (the
English Puritans)
A Virgin land, waiting to be explored and
possessed (Sir Walter Raleigh and other
English poets)
Terra nullius, a wilderness owned by noone, waiting to be conquered and cultivated
(Christian European settlers)
The trouble with Columbus’ ‘discovery’
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Did not know he had
‘discovered’ the
America, but believed
it to be the Indies
American history begins with
Columbus because
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Columbus’ letters to the Spanish Crown are the first
written sources available
Alan Karras, Atlantic historian: ‘from this moment
forward, the histories of Europe, America, and
Africa are inextricably intertwined’
Tvetan Todorov, literary theorist: ‘our [European]
modern history begins with the conquest of
America.’
Thus, the ‘foundation of America’ lies in writing (the
discourse of America) and in fighting (Europeans
vs. Natives)
The trouble with early ‘American
literature’
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Native American literature was oral, not translated or
written down until centuries later
Immigrants’ writing was multi-lingual, and has to be
read by us in translation
The Puritans, who did write in English, did not write in
the literary forms of poetry, fiction, or plays, but for
religious reasons they wrote autobiographical accounts
of settlement, captivity narratives, and letters
None of this writing was self-consciously ‘American’ at
a time when the colonies were still ruled by the
Spanish, French, and British crown.
A national literature is always a retrospective
construction: what fits?
Early Native American
Literature: Brief Outline Guide
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I. Oral Literature: Myths and Legends
A. Devices
1. Repetition
2. Enumeration
3. Incremental development
4. Ritual beginnings and endings
5. Use of archaic language
6. Specific structure
a. Introduction: harmonious situation
b. Thesis: one or more episodes showing disruption
of harmony
c. Antithesis: measures employed to overcome
disruption
d. Conclusion: restored harmony completed by cycles
of four or some power of four (four songs four nights,
etc.)
Early Native American
Literature: Brief Outline Guide
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7. Terse style
B. Functions
1. Beliefs about nature of physical world
2. Beliefs about social order and appropriate
behavior
3. Beliefs about human nature and the problem of
good and evil
C. Characteristics of Myths
1. Myths: primal world
2. Beings are animals spirits in more or less human
form: monsters, confusions of nature
3. Mythic age flows into age of transformation
(legends)
Early Native American
Literature: Brief Outline Guide
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D. Characteristics of Legends
1. Culture hero or transformer orders the world
2. Culture hero or transformer turns animal people into
animals
3. Other beings become landmarks
4. Flows into historical time (real heroes)
E. Figures
1. Culture heroes
a. Dramatize prototypical events and behaviors
b. Show how to do what is right and how we become the
people we are
c. Shape the world and gives it its character by theft of sun,
fire, or water
d. Often of divine birth
e. Myths are not concerned with original owners, only with
culture hero's acquisition of them
Early Native American
Literature: Brief Outline Guide
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2. Trickster heroes
a. Provide for disorder and change
b. Enable us to see the seamy underside of
life
c. Remind us that culture is finally artificial
d. Provide for the possibility of change
e. May be over reachers who gets their
comeuppance
Early Native American
Literature: Brief Outline Guide
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F. Themes
1. Formation of the world through struggle and robbery
(Pacific coast)
2. Movement from a sky world to a water world by means of a
fall (Iroquoian)
3. Fortunate fall; creation story
4. Earth-diver myth
a. flood that occurred after creation of the universe
b. recreation of the present world out of mud brought up from
under the water by the earth-diver (muskrat or waterbird)
5. Theft of fire
6. Emergence myths:
a. ascent of beings from under the surface of the earth to its
surface
b. ascent from a series of underworlds
7. Migration myths: accompany emergence myths
Early Native American
Literature: Brief Outline Guide
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II. Facts and Figures
A. Population (estimated)
1. European arrival
a. 18 million in North America
b. 5 million in U. S.
2. 1980 census (estimate): 1,418,195
B. Culture
1. European arrival
a. Over 300 cultural groups
b. 200 languages
2. Present-day: By 1940, 149 languages still in use
Early Native American
Literature: Brief Outline Guide
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C. Early Dates
1. Pequot War 1637
2. King Philip's War (1672-1676) (vs. British)
3. Pueblo Revolt (1680) (vs. Spanish)
4. Iroquois defeated other tribes for
westward expansion (1644-1680)
5. Indian Removal Act (1830)
6. "Trail of Tears": Cherokee Removal to
Oklahoma (1838)
Early American Period
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"The First Thanksgiving," a painting by J.L.G. Ferris,
depicts America’s early settlers and Native Americans
celebrating a bountiful harvest.
Early American Literature
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American literature begins with the orally
transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics
(always songs) of Indian cultures. There
was no written literature among the more
than 500 different Indian languages and
tribal cultures that existed in North America
before the first Europeans arrived. As a
result, Native American oral literature is
quite diverse.
Early American Literature
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Narratives from quasi-nomadic hunting
cultures like the Navajo are different
from stories of settled agricultural
tribes such as the pueblo-dwelling
Acoma; the stories of northern
lakeside dwellers such as the Ojibwa
often differ radically from stories of
desert tribes like the Hopi.
Early American Literature
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Tribes maintained their own religions worshipping gods, animals, plants, or
sacred persons. Systems of
government ranged from democracies
to councils of elders to theocracies.
These tribal variations enter into the
oral literature as well.
Early American Literature
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Still, it is possible to make a few
generalizations. Indian stories, for example,
glow with reverence for nature as a spiritual
as well as physical mother. Nature is alive
and endowed with spiritual forces; main
characters may be animals or plants, often
totems associated with a tribe, group, or
individual. The closest to the Indian sense of
holiness in later American literature is Ralph
Waldo Emerson's transcendental "OverSoul," which pervades all of life.
Early American Literature
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The Mexican tribes revered the divine Quetzalcoatl,
a god of the Toltecs and Aztecs, and some tales of
a high god or culture were told elsewhere. However,
there are no long, standardized religious cycles
about one supreme divinity. The closest equivalents
to Old World spiritual narratives are often accounts
of shamans initiations and voyages. Apart from
these, there are stories about culture heroes such
as the Ojibwa tribe's Manabozho or the Navajo
tribe's Coyote.
Early American Literature
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These tricksters are treated with varying degrees of
respect. In one tale they may act like heroes, while
in another they may seem selfish or foolish.
Although past authorities, such as the Swiss
psychologist Carl Jung, have deprecated trickster
tales as expressing the inferior, amoral side of the
psyche, contemporary scholars -- some of them
Native Americans -- point out that Odysseus and
Prometheus, the revered Greek heroes, are
essentially tricksters as well.
Early American Literature
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Examples of almost every oral genre can be
found in American Indian literature: lyrics,
chants, myths, fairy tales, humorous
anecdotes, incantations, riddles, proverbs,
epics, and legendary histories. Accounts of
migrations and ancestors abound, as do
vision or healing songs and tricksters' tales.
Certain creation stories are particularly
popular. In one well-known creation story,
told with variations among many tribes, a
turtle holds up the world.
Early American Literature
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In a Cheyenne version, the creator, Maheo, has
four chances to fashion the world from a watery
universe. He sends four water birds diving to try to
bring up earth from the bottom. The snow goose,
loon, and mallard soar high into the sky and sweep
down in a dive, but cannot reach bottom; but the
little coot, who cannot fly, succeeds in bringing up
some mud in his bill. Only one creature, humble
Grandmother Turtle, is the right shape to support
the mud world Maheo shapes on her shell - hence
the Indian name for America, "Turtle Island."
Early American Literature
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The songs or poetry, like the narratives, range from
the sacred to the light and humorous: There are
lullabies, war chants, love songs, and special songs
for children's games, gambling, various chores,
magic, or dance ceremonials. Generally the songs
are repetitive. Short poem-songs given in dreams
sometimes have the clear imagery and subtle mood
associated with Japanese haiku or Easterninfluenced imagistic poetry. A Chippewa song runs:
A loon I thought it was
But it was
My love's
splashing oar.
Early American Literature
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Vision songs, often very short, are
another distinctive form. Appearing in
dreams or visions, sometimes with no
warning, they may be healing, hunting,
or love songs. Often they are personal.
Early American Literature
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Indian oral tradition and its relation to American
literature as a whole is one of the richest and least
explored topics in American studies. The Indian
contribution to America is greater than is often
believed. The hundreds of Indian words in everyday
American English include "canoe," "tobacco,"
"potato," "moccasin," "moose," "persimmon,"
"raccoon," "tomahawk," and "totem." Contemporary
Native American writing, discussed in chapter 8,
also contains works of great beauty.
Conclusions
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There is much we do not know about early America, notably
about Native American societies, because of a lack of written
sources
Our study of the literature and historiography of the United
States is heavily influenced by the 15th C idea of America as
Eden. Over time, this has evolved into
a ‘discourse of America’ (as promise of freedom and wealth)
that is self-serving and self-perpetuating, and is known as
American exceptionalism
this discourse can be contrasted with an Atlanticist approach,
that looks instead at the multiple connections between
America, Africa, and Europe
combining literature and culture with history and politics is
essential in doing American Studies, because the whole is
more than the sum of its parts