Suppression And Resistance

As a famous native mixed-blood writer in Native American Renaissance,Gerard Vizenor has enriched contemporary American literature with his unique writings.The trickster narrative is the most prominent feature of Vizenor and his series of “trickster novels” have attracted extensive attention from literature scholars,which express his great concern to the hard living condition of Native Americans in the contemporary American society.Vizenor's The Trickster of Liberty: Tribal Heirs to a Wild Baronage published in1988 can be regarded as such a representative of describing Native Americans' living predicament,which has aroused a concern in the academic circles both at home and abroad.This thesis aims to study this novel from the perspective of space,exploring the various space suppression that Native Americans have suffered under the invasion of the whites and their rebellious resistance in seeking for independent living space.This thesis consists of five parts: Chapter One takes a brief introduction to Gerald Vizenor,his works,literature review on The Trickster of Liberty: Tribal Heirs to a Wild Baronage and theoretical framework of this thesis.Chapter Two focuses on the occupied tribal physical space and tribal people's resistance against the marginalization by return to motherland,revealing inextricable connection between tribal people and tribal land.Chapter Three explores the infiltrated tribal cultural space and a series of resistance by tribal people to preserve their traditional culture.Chapter Four discusses the restricted tribal social space and tribal people's resistance to actively seek for survival in the squeezed social space.Chapter Five is the conclusion part which aims to summarize the main discussions in each chapter.It points out that space shaping is an important carrier in Vizenor's creation.This novel presents a rough repressed panorama of Native Americans in diversified space in the20 th century,which is a true writing of their hard living condition,and also is a tribute to the indomitable resistance of Native Americans in the suppressed space.