The War in Words is the first book to study the captivity and confinement narratives generated by a single American war as it traces the development and variety of the captivity narrative genre. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola examines the complex 1862 Dakota Conflict (also called the Dakota War) by focusing on twenty-four of the dozens of narratives that European Americans and Native Americans wrote about it. This six-week war was the deadliest confrontation between whites and Dakotas in Minnesota’s history. Conducted at the same time as the Civil War, it is sometimes called Minnesota’s Civil War because it was—and continues to be—so divisive. The Dakota Conflict aroused impassioned prose from participants and commentators as they disputed causes, events, identity, ethnicity, memory, and the all-important matter of the war’s legacy. Though the study targets one region, its ramifications reach far beyond Minnesota in its attention to war and memory. An ethnography of representative Dakota Conflict narratives and an analysis of the war’s historiography, The War in Words includes new archival information, historical data, and textual criticism.

The War in Words: Reading the Dakota Conflict through the Captivity Literature

History

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle

Americas

University Of Nebraska Press

Twaynes United States Authors Series presents concise critical introductions to great writers and their works.
Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an authors work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volumeaddresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writers work. A reader new to the work under examination will, after reading theAuthors Series, be compelled to turn to the originals, bringing to the reading a basic knowledge and fresh critical perspectives.

The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550-1900 (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

Levernier, James A.

Teen & Young Adult

Twayne Publishers

An American literary form that flourished from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, the Indian Captivity narrative has long fascinated readers on both sides of the Atlantic. These narratives - chronicling the unpredictable encounters between Native Americans and newcomers - number in the thousands. They encompass the factual as well as the fictional. And in their often negative portrayals of Native Americans, these narratives have aroused considerable controversy.Presenting a broad survey of these narratives and shedding much-needed light on their place in American culture and letters comes The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550-1900, written by two scholars eminently well versed in their subject matter. In clear and straightforward writing, Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola and James Arthur Levernier argue that these texts played a vital role in American culture, forming the first truly American literary form and revealing, in their racist subtexts, much about white America's fear of "otherness."With a focus on both the literary and the historical features of the narratives, the authors take a New Historicist approach, extending the accepted chronology to encompass texts written in the 1500s through the 1900s and representing most regions of the continental United States. Here readers will find references to hundreds of primary texts and commentary on texts, as well as expert treatment of such topics as the mythology surrounding the form, the narratives' images of Native Americans and of women, and Mary Rowlandson's well-known 1682 account.A highly accessible work that nevertheless retains its subject's complexity, The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550-1900 - complemented by nine important illustrations - provides an ideal resource for high school and college students, and for general audiences.

Literature & Fiction

United States

Twayne Pub

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