At our next class meeting, we'll spend some time thinking about where "American literature" begins. We'll be reading several Native American texts, as well as texts by Spanish writers and by an Englishman who wrote extensively about Narragansett language and culture. These readings raise several different kinds of questions. First, consider the texts themselves. As you read these texts, what details do you notice about their form, plot, style, etc.? In the Native American stories, do you see indications that these texts were orally transmitted before they were adapted to written form? Consider, for example, the differences between the texts by Cusick and Lloyd, on the one hand, and the versions of "The Bungling Host" told by Abbey and Williams, on the other. Do you see points at which Native American and Anglo-American conventions seem to blend or jar against one another in these texts? What issues seem particularly engaging to the Spanish and English writers you're reading? And how do you respond to the form of Roger Williams's Key?

Second, consider the sources of these texts and the degree to which they are mediated. On the most basic level, the Spanish texts raise questions about the complexities of translation. Moreover, in studying early Native American materials, we run into the problem that many of the earliest written texts of these stories and legends were written down by non-Indian writers, who may have modified or shaped their texts in various ways. On the other hand, "authenticity" is a fairly tricky term, and it's worth thinking about what assumptions underlie assessments of texts as more or less authentic. Is a text by a Native American writer necessarily more "authentic" than one by a seventeenth-century English writer?

For example, Roger Williams's Key into the Language of America is a complex text that certainly can't be taken as an entirely reliable source of information about seventeenth-century Algonkian peoples. However, as various Indian nations strove to recapture their lost heritage in the twentieth century, many turned to early Anglo-American materials (including Williams's Key) as sources for their cultural recovery. Does their willingness to draw on such sources increase the credibility or importance of texts like A Key into the Language of America?

In contrast, the "Iroquois Creation Story" included in the Norton Anthology was written by a Tuscarora man named David Cusick and published in an 1827 collection. Does it seem more or less mediated than Williams's account? To what extent are Anglo-American literary conventions present in this text? To what extent is "authenticity" an important concern? Consider how Cusick frames and narrates this text. For example, how different is the narrative voice in the Pima stories told to J. W. Lloyd by Thin Leather from that in Cusick's versions? To what extent do you attribute these differences to the mediation of Lloyd? To what extent might they simply be ordinary variations in authorial style?

Finally, I'd like you to consider where these texts fit into the American canon. Think about how the editors of the Norton Anthology have chosen to position them, and about how they've chosen to introduce them. What issues do the editors stress in presenting these texts to you? What terms and themes dominate their introductory materials? Think also about how these texts fit into our course. How prominently should texts in translation figure in an American literature course offered in an English department? To what extent should Native American literature be stressed? Consider the degree to which Native American writers have been represented in the various American literature courses you've taken so far. What issues seem to motivate the inclusion or exclusion of these texts? How much are they amenable to the same strategies of literary study that you apply to other Anglo-American texts? How should we approach these texts so that we avoid marginalizing them, but also remain sensitive to the ways in which they're shaped by multiple literary traditions?