Storytelling In The Novels Of Louise Erdrich

The oral tradition of storytelling, the essence of Native American culture, possesses special meaning for Native Americans living in modern times. Since Native American values have been articulated and preserved by the means of its oral tradition, storytelling serves as the primary medium for Non-Native people to understand Native American culture and thought. For Native Americans, the profound significance of storytelling plays an essential role in terms of the transmission of tradition, the recording of culture, the establishment of connection, and formation of identity.When Native American literature took clear shape, one of its characteristics included the relevance to oral tradition. A major concern of Native writers lies in’ bringing their marginalized culture to larger audiences. Through embracing writing as a major facet of storytelling, Native writers convey to readers their own interpretation of identity and this endeavor in turn enables the audience to learn and appreciate the Native culture.In the past two decades, a New Native American Criticism has been formed owing to abundant sophisticated writing about Native American literature. As a talented and prolific contemporary Native writer, Louise Erdrich has created series of works that have been recognized as mainstream canon in American literature. She has thus gained increasing attention from critics both in the United States and in China. Wide critical interests have been aroused by Erdrich’s literary experiments. In recent years critics have explored the Ojibwa roots of Erdrich’s use of the story cycle form in her novels. Louise Erdrich is among the contemporary native writers who take a positive attitude toward the integration of Native culture and the more broad American culture as a multicultural entity. Her characteristic literary art is noted as a hybrid genre that combines traditional storytelling with Western literacy. Like her dual ethnicity of German and Chippewa (or Ojibwe in an older term), her works are described as "mixed-blood" by critics. With "the regenerative powers" of storytelling, Erdrich has succeeded in delivering the unique Native culture to non-Natives for broader appreciation, opening up more possibility of the co-existence of diversified cultures. Moreover, it is her "hybrid discourse" that makes her writing a Native category that reaches the mainstream.This thesis distinguishes itself by approaching three of Louise Erdrich’s novels--Love Medicine, Tracks, and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse--illustrating her distinctive writing style, in particular her adoption of the ancient oral tradition of Native storytelling in her works. These three novels came out in three distinct periods of her career; however, the common thread that sows them together exists in the Ojibwe origin, as well as the theme of cultural conflict between Native Americans and whites, and, most importantly, the emphasis on the traditional format of oral storytelling. This thesis conducts a comprehensive discussion on four main aspects of these novels:narration, structure, language and character. For each of these dimensions, a comprehensive analysis on the text demonstrates how Louise Erdrich integrates storytelling into contemporary Native American writing through her creative alteration.The last part of this thesis includes an in-depth analysis of the hybrid discourse of Erdrich from the theoretical perspectives of New Historicism and Polyphony. In the hybrid discourse of Louise Erdrich, the notion of equality inherent in Native culture is implied through her manipulation of multiple narrations. By exposing the extraordinary perception of Native culture to the mass audience, Louise Erdrich presents us with a diverse world filled with limitless possibilities.