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213 pages

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Spaces of the Mind reveals how both immigrant European and modern Native communities and individuals use oral and written narratives to define and center themselves in time and space. Elaine A. Jahner skillfully weaves together years of fieldwork among the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota, her own memories of growing up in a German-Russian town across the Missouri River from the Standing Rock Sioux, and an illuminating set of narrative concepts.

Spaces of the Mind proposes a theory of cognitive style that emphasizes the ways in which distinct cultural identities are expressed through the structure of a narrative and the unfolding of its performance, telling, or reading. Themes of creativity and survival amid loss pervade the stories told by Natives about themselves and their past when discussing the inundation of the original Standing Rock Sioux village during the Oahe Dam construction in the 1950s. Immigrant Germans and Alsatians struggled to reconcile the hardships of the northern Plains with what they left behind in the Old World, and the narratives of a German-Russian community reflect and encourage survival in the face of transition. Jahner also studies how two prominent novelists—James Welch, a member of the Blackfeet community, and Mildred Walker, who left her native New England for the West— perceive a single landscape, the state of Montana, and how it has influenced their thought and narratives.

Spaces of the Mind provides a fresh understanding of Western literature and culture, encourages a reconsideration of the formation and modern character of the American West, and contributes to a fuller appreciation of the significance of narrative.

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Publié par	Nebraska Paperback
Date de parution	01 novembre 2004
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780803204256
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0850€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Spaces of the Mind

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frontiers of narrative

Series Editor David Herman, North Carolina State University

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Jahner, Elaine,1942– Spaces of the mind : narrative and community in the American West / Elaine A. Jahner. p. cm.—(Frontiers of narrative) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn 0803225989(cloth : alk. paper) 1. American literature—West (U.S.)—History and criticism.2. Authors, American—Homes and haunts —West (U.S.)3. West (U.S.)—Intellectual life. 4. West (U.S.—In literature.5. Community in literature. 6. Narration (Rhetoric) II. Series.I. Title. ps271.j34 2004 810.9'3278—dc22 2004007212

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Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Theoretical Foundations 2. The Narrating Community 3. Narrative in Transit 4. Narrative Redirected 5. The Stranger’s Language

Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

Contents

vii ix

1 40 82 113 138

157 169 179 185

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Acknowledgments

Spaces of the Mindis a project that owes much to many people and was long in the making. The work began when Mary College (now the University of Mary) de veloped an educational grant for Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. I participated in the project, and in conjunction with courses I was taking at Indiana Univer sity, I began to develop my work on spatial categories in Siouan folk narrative as indicators of cultural continuity. The linguistic and anthropology departments at Indiana University gave me grants to extend the work into other cultures. The Vetter and the Wald families were kind enough to tell their stories of im migration to me. Members of my own family also contributed to the immigration materials. The ﬁnal stages of this project owe everything to Gary Dunham and his editorial work. Without his efforts and the contributions of the University of Nebraska Press, this project would never have been completed.

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Introduction

Narrative and the varied ingenious uses we make of it as we negotiate among different cultures, histories, and locations constitute the primary focus of this book. As anyone realizes, though, that statement implicates much of the theoretical debate and strategic maneuvering that have characterized recent research in several disciplines. All the talk and writing has created a situation in which, as Bill Nichols has said, “narrative’s not the thing it used to be. More than standing as one form of artistic expression to be worried over by those attending to the nature of art, narrative has become a central preoccupation in its own right, pushing matters of art and levels of culture to the side. . . . This was always, however, a science with a 1 difference.” Iflevels of cultureare set aside when narrative takes center theoretical stage, that move merely emphasizes narrative’s central role in any study of culture, a role that takes on some extra and timehonored importance when the critical perspective is crosscultural. Narrative orchestrates the organizing principles setting up an entire 2 cultural ﬁeld within which agents improvise on the cultural script. And as forart, well, that term is but our way of designating the transformations of experience occurring when virtuosity informs highintensity improvs; and when the critical spotlight is on crosscultural narrative, it reveals previously unsuspected artistic moves and countermoves. But this book is by no means an unrelentingly abstract rehearsal of academic theory. It is a book about actual people and places and the stories that these people use to account for who they are in relation to where they are. It is a book about stretching critical boundaries a bit to include more art in social science and to encourage the poetic speculation that can be a happy side 3 effect of detailed empirical analysis. Therefore, each chapter tells a theoretical story that is no more or less than a precisely plotted critical design to allow a few people to have their say on the global stage and to give the worldwide audience some clues about how to ﬁnd contemporary signiﬁcance in these historical and local dramas. The ﬁrst chapters of this book contextualize narratives that I learned in two strikingly different communities: the Yanktonai Sioux in North Dakota and their GermanRussian neighbors. These communities exhibit about as much cultural, historical, and linguistic contrast as can be found anywhere in the world. Both have had a history of colonial rule even though the two colonial experiences encompass

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