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Captivity narratives are not only among the earliest truly American literary forms, but they also play a key role in exploring and expressing what could be called colonial anxiety, meaning cultural anxieties and even fears that are specific to a colonial setting, characterized by plurality as well as by violence, domination, and dispossession targeting the Other. This seminar invites students to investigate captivity narratives on this basis, using examples ranging from women's captivity narratives among Indigenous peoples from the seventeenth century to nineteenth-century slave narratives and frontier fiction. Special attention will be given not only to the formal features of captivity narratives themselves but also to the notion of form in general, as well as to practicing the formal analysis of literary texts.
Please purchase the following books:
• Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives, edited by Kathryn Derounian-Stodola, Penguin, 1998.
• The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper, with an introduction by Richard Slotkin, Penguin, 1986.
• The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, by Olaudah Equiano, edited by Vincent Carretta, Penguin, 1995/2003. |
