Ethnocriticism: Ethnography, History, Literature

By Arnold Krupat

Book Overview

Ethnocriticism moves cultural critique to the boundaries that exist between cultures. The boundary traversed in Krupat's dexterous new book is the contested line between native and mainstream American literatures and cultures. For over a century the discourses of ethnography, history, and literature have sought to represent the Indian in America. Krupat considers all these discourses and the ways in which Indians have attempted to "write back," producing an oppositional--or at least a parallel--discourse. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520334426
• ISBN13: 9780520334427
• Release Date: August 2022
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Challenging and provocative

To those looking for an entry point to Krupat's scholarship, or to Native American literary criticism, here is the place to start. Krupat's work is clear, but uses Native American literature to raise perplexing questions about problems of identity and their expression through literature. I do not agree with everything in Ethnocriticism, but I also return to time after time to sharpen my understanding of the difficulty of reading Native American literature. Were I to recommend to someone with an interest in the field a short list of critical works, I would start with this and with Craig Womack's Red on Red.