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14 - Rethinking the Native American Renaissance: Texts and Contexts

from Part III - Native American Renaissance (Post-1960s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
A. Robert Lee
Edited by
Melanie Benson Taylor
Melanie Benson Taylor
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
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Summary

In the aftermath of House Made of Dawn (1968) the assumption arose that it heralded a Native American Renaissance, the unprecedented literary flowering of fiction, poetry, life-writing, drama and discursive work. The roster typically included novels by Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welsh, Louise Erdrich and Gerald Vizenor, the poetry of Luci Tapahonso, Simon Ortiz and Linda Hogan, and the theatre of Hanay Geiogamah. In Native American Renaissance, not un-controversially, Kenneth Lincoln would argue that a presiding canon had emerged. Questions, however, arose as to how to situate these undoubtedly important figures within the larger continuum of Native authorship. What status was to hold for the vast legacies of oral tradition, tribal oratory, trickster story, chants of healing, even visual art? How best to address Canadian/First Nation publication, E. Pauline Johnson to Tom King? What of contemporaries like Sherman Alexie? This chapter looks both vertically and horizontally to position the Native American Renaissance.

Keywords

Native American Renaissanceauthorshipfictionpoetrylife-writingcanonfirst nationtrickster.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Native American Literature , pp. 255 - 270
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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