pre-colonial

Pre- Colonial/Native American Literature

STYLE OF GENRE

-For its first 200 years American prose reflected the settlement and growth of the American colonies, largely through histories, religious writings, and expedition and travel narratives. Biography also played an important role, especially in America’s search for native heroes.

-Fiction appeared only after the colonies gained independence, when the clamor for a uniquely American literature brought forth novels based on events in America’s past. With a flowering of prose in the mid-1800s, the young nation found its own voice. By then fiction had become the dominant literary genre in America.

-In the 20th century, American literature took its place on the world stage and began to exert influence on other literatures.

Pre-Colonial/ Colonial Period

• • American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, historic records, and lyrics.

  • There was no written literature among more than 500 different Indian Languages and tribal cultures that existed in North America.

  • Tribes maintained their own religions- Worshipping Gods, Animals, Plants, or Sacred persons.

  • Systems of government ranged from democracies to councils of elders to theocracies. These Tribal variations enter into the oral literature as well.

  • In it’s literature, Nature is alive and endowed with spiritual forces, main characters may be animals or plants.

  • Examples of almost every oral genre can be found in American Literature: lyrics, chants, myths, fairy tales, humorous anecdotes, riddles, proverbs, epics etc…

  • The earliest explorers of America were not English, Spanish, or French. The first European record of exploration in America is in a Scandinavian Language.

  • The first known and sustained contact between the Americas and the rest of the world, however began with the famous voyage of an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, funded by the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella.

Archetypes

It may seem redundant at first, as strictly speaking an archetype is simply an example of something; in short every trope is a story archetype.

An Archetypal Character is a character who appears over and over in legends far and wide, even in cultures that have shut themselves off from the world. For example, the "blood-drinking risen dead" are an Archetype, as almost every culture has come up with its own legends independent of each other. "Angel" is an archetype, so is the 'tragic hero' trying to overcome the evils of his past. 'Coyote' is an archetype. Xena is an archetype. Any of these may be disguised as a Space Alien.

Some lit-theories classify archetypes by the role/purpose the character inhabits for the story. These classes are: Protagonist, Antagonist, Reason, Emotion, Sidekick, Skeptic, Guardian, and Contagonist.

A related concept is the 'ectype', a distorted or flawed version of the archetype. For example, Batman is archetypical. He's a rich man who dedicates himself to anonymously fighting crime (protecting society) with a variety of gadgets. Many of the characters in the comic book "Watchmen" are ectypes based on this archetype.

Here are 6 Major Archetypes and a List of Lots more familiar ones!

Native American Poetry Chart Review

Native American Powerpoint in Summary