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Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities

Allegories of Encounter: Colonial Literacy and Indian Captivities

by Newman, Andrew
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9781469643458 The University of North Carolina Press

Presenting an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to colonial America's best-known literary genre, Andrew Newman analyzes depictions of reading, writing, and recollecting texts in Indian captivity narratives. While histories of literacy and colonialism have emphasized the experiences of Native Americans, as students in missionary schools or as parties to treacherous treaties, captivity narratives reveal what literacy meant to colonists among Indians. Colonial captives treasured the written word in order to distinguish themselves from their Native captors and to affiliate with their distant cultural communities. Their narratives suggest that Indians recognized this value, sometimes with benevolence: repeatedly, they presented colonists with books.

In this way and others, Scriptures, saintly lives, and even Shakespeare were introduced into diverse experiences of colonial captivity. What other scholars have understood more simply as textual parallels, Newman argues instead may reflect lived allegories, the identification of one's own unfolding story with the stories of others. In an authoritative, wide-ranging study that encompasses the foundational New England narratives, accounts of martyrdom and cultural conversion in New France and Mohawk country in the 1600s, and narratives set in Cherokee territory and the Great Lakes region during the late eighteenth century, Newman opens up old tales to fresh, thought-provoking interpretations.

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Product details

BrandThe University of North Carolina Press
Pub dateJan 7, 2019
ISBN-101469643456
ISBN-139781469643458
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions9.21 × 0.69 × 6.14 in
Weight1 lb
Last updated 2026-09-08 13:03
$121.58
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