西北师范大学美国文学通史课件 Chapter 26 Colonial Period.ppt

Chapter 26 Multiethnic Literature(Ⅱ) Introduction ＊In the last few decades, diversity has been particularly prized as a strength of American culture and literature. Interest in multiculturalism has been on the increase and along with it the enthusiasm for the literatures of the different ethnic groups in America. This has had to do with the 1960s and 1970s when multiracial awareness grew among the various ethnic groups in America. The African Americans took the lead, and the other minority groups like the Hispanic Americans and the Asian Americans followed suit. This consciousness received instant literary expression. As a result, American literature is now no longer seen as one monolith of Anglo-American writings for which Hawthorne, Whitman, Eliot, Frost, Hemingway, Faulkner, Lowell and Bellow have been well known. It needs rethinking. The re-conceptualization of American literature is bringing its so called "mainstream" and "tributary" components closer, and American literature is becoming more inclusive to its multi-ethnic writers. A more authentic American literary history is now in the process of being written which will exclude none of its multiracial facets. The recent literary scene is already becoming amazingly colorful. ＊Let's begin with the Native American literature first. The image of the American Indians in American literature has been for a long time a distorted one, presented by non-Indian authors; they appear good or bad not as the American Indians see themselves, but as some white authors conceive of them. Thus, whatever portrayal of them there is in mainstream literature has been once or twice removed from the truth. ＊At the time of European settlement, well over three hundred Indian cultures existed in the North American continent. The different nations of the American Indians such as Lakota, Hopi, Chickasaw, and Mohawk all had their own separate civilizations. D'Arcy McNickle (1904-1977) ＊the writer who devoted his life to improving