Buried in Shades of Night
Contested Voices, Indian Captivity, and the Legacy of King Philip's War
Publication Year: 2013
In this groundbreaking new book, Billy J. Stratton offers a critical examination of the narrative of Mary Rowlandson. Although it has long been thought that the book’s preface was written by the influential Puritan minister Increase Mather, Stratton’s research suggests that Mather was also deeply involved in the production of the narrative itself, which bears strong traces of a literary form that was already well established in Europe. As Stratton notes, the portrayal of Indian people as animalistic “savages” and of Rowlandson’s solace in Biblical exegesis served as a convenient alibi for the colonial aspirations of the Puritan leadership.
Stratton calls into question much that has been accepted as fact by scholars and historians over the last century, and re-centers the focus on the marginalized perspective of Native American people, including those whose land had been occupied by the Puritan settlers. In doing so, Stratton demands a careful reconsideration of the role that the captivity narrative—which was instrumental in shaping conceptions of “frontier warfare”—has played in the development of both American literary history and national identity.
Published by: University of Arizona Press
Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
List of Illustrations
In 1682, the captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson, The Soveraignty and Goodness of God . . . , was published in four separate editions in both New England and London. In the three hundred and forty years since, the account has alternately been ignored and revived multiple times, ...
I would like to offer my appreciation to all the friends and colleagues who provided encouragement and inspiration, read earlier drafts of this manuscript, and generously offered their feedback and suggestions as I grappled with the many difficult questions addressed throughout this work. ...
In the western literary tradition, the story of the Jewish people and their escape from enslavement at the hands of the Egyptians, as recorded in the Bible, represents an early and particularly influential captivity narrative. The arduous journey endured by B’nei Yisrael, the Children of Israel as they fled Egypt ...
1. “Like a company of sheep torn by wolves”: Transatlantic Influences on the Development of the Indian Captivity Narrative
The literary form of the captivity narrative has operated as a vital circuit for transnational colonial discourse since its inception. During the Age of Discovery, accounts of captivity provided an indispensable means of connecting the European metropole to foreign lands in Asia and Africa and, later, the Americas and Australia. ...
2. Exile, Deterritorialization, and Intertextuality: The Cartographic Impulse of Puritan Historiography
The processes of dispossession and deterritorialization typify the historical experience of Native people of the Americas following European contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As was demonstrated in the last chapter, however, the way these processes coalesce had as much to do with the deployment of texts as it did with armed conflict. ...
3. “And I Only Am Escaped To Tell The News”: Witnessing History in the True Narrative of Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity
Roy Harvey Pearce’s 1947 essay, “The Significances of the Captivity Narrative,” marks the first significant study of the Indian captivity narrative. Since then, scholars have employed a variety of critical approaches, from gender, cultural studies, and new historicism to more recent studies in the fields of phenomenology, ecocriticism, and even posthumanism.1 ...
4. Fractured Histories, Captive Subjects: The Masque of Textual Effacement
The traumatic events of King Philip’s War and its aftermath left an indelible impression on the Puritan body politic and nationalist colonial identity. As the proliferation of captivity narratives and historical texts in the years that followed illustrates, English conflict with Native nations and the French was widely seen ...
5. Representing the Native in the Twenty-First Century: “A Strange Fish” Still?
As Alexie’s words bear witness, the events that transpired during the brief period of time between the attack on Lancaster and captivation of Mary Rowlandson in February 1676, and the death of Metacomet in August of the same year, continue to have an influence on the development of American literary and historical discourses. ...
We Indians dare never forget “history is written by the winners.” Some say this is a generalized adaptation of a quote that is attributed to Napoleon: “History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.” This is no less true of literary history or the history of a scholarly tradition in academic discourse; ...
About the Author
Billy J. Stratton earned a PhD in American Indian studies from the University of Arizona, with a specialization in Native American literature and critical theory. He serves as an assistant professor and as the director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of English at the University of Denver, ...
Page Count: 223
Illustrations: 9 photos
Publication Year: 2013
OCLC Number: 855895886
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