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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520076664
• ISBN13: 9780520076662
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 225 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.8"

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.