Conceptualizing American Indian literary theory: Oral theories and written traditions

"Conceptualizing American Indian Literary Theory: Oral Theories and Written Traditions" is divided into four chapters. Chapter One argues that contemporary American Indian literary criticism may be divided into three modes, each with its own critical methodology and epistemological source. Chapter One argues that American Indian literary criticism should emphasize communal and activist concerns and interpret Native literature using the methodologies and epistemologies expressed first in American Indian oral traditions. Chapter Two analyzes N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain using an oral traditional critical methodology to define the critical concepts which the text explores. Chapter Two identifies the concepts of language, perception, and process as central to Momaday's theory of cultural and individual transformation through storytelling. Chapter Three analyzes the theories of history and politics expressed in Gerald Vizenor's novel Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles. Chapter Three claims that Vizenor's use of the American Indian trickster figure offers a unique set of strategies of decolonization. Chapter Four analyzes Robert J. Conley's Real People Series, showing how oral traditional stories provide the conceptual terms through which to interpret contemporary American Indian literature. Chapter Four claims that written literature and oral tradition are in dialogue with one another. Readers of Conley's Real People series play a necessary role in this cultural and intellectual conversation which invigorates Cherokee culture.