Bibliograph

The ignoble savage, American literary racism, 1790-1890, Louise K. Barnett

Type

Label

The ignoble savage, American literary racism, 1790-1890, Louise K. Barnett

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Bibliography: p. 205-213

Illustrations

portraits

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

The ignoble savage

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

1530663

Responsibility statement

Louise K. Barnett

Series statement

Contributions in American studies, no. 18

Sub title

American literary racism, 1790-1890

Summary

In the first century of American nationhood, the clash of Indian and white cultures found expression in a unique literary genre: the frontier romance. Written by a white author for a white audience, the frontier romance typically included a genteel hero and heroine, a rugged frontiersman, and both hostile and friendly Indians. The Indians were completely stereotyped. From captivity narratives and Puritan chronicles, fiction borrowed the figure of the bad Indian: treacherous, vengeful, superstitious, and totally inimical to whites. Good Indians, in contrast were devoted to whites: subservient, loyal, and self-sacrificing. Both were ignoble savages. Whites were depicted as superior not only in civilized arts, but in wilderness skills. Even in evil, the white man who pursued vengeance was able to out-Indian the Indian in killing and scalping. The white was portrayed as sexually more attractive than the Indian. Both Hawthorne and Melville made use of frontier situations in their writing, and both exposed the racism on which Indian stereotypes were founded. They viewed the white man's destruction of primitive peoples as the true barbarism. In this perception they stood apart from their contemporaries in American literature

Table Of Contents

Introduction: Some Pre-Fictive Images of the Indian -- The White Fantasy World of the Frontier Romance -- Nationalism and the Frontier Romance -- The Fictive Design: Beyond the Captivity Narrative -- The White Man's Indian: A Range of Stereotypes -- White Vis-a-Vis Indians -- A Paradigm for Racism: The Subgenre of Indian Hater Fiction -- The Subversive Periphery of the Frontier Romance -- Epilogue -- Appendix A: Chronology of Frontier Romances -- Appendix B: Frontier Romances Arranged Alphabetically by Title

Classification