Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing and Representation in North American Indian Texts - Softcover

Murray, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253206502 ISBN 13: 9780253206503

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1991

Synopsis

" . . . creates a new definition of American Indian literary texts as a self-representational genre. This is an intelligent and insightful application of post-modern critical methods to American Indian texts. The scope of the study is broad and ambitious, and the attempt to define Indian self-representations from colonial times to the present is innovative and instructive." ―Raymond J. DeMallie

" . . . very suggestive, provocative, engaging . . . ―Studies in American Indian Literatures

" . . . Murray's book establishes itself as the single best introduction to Native American text-making in particular and the betrayals of the translation in general. An essential acquisition for all college and university libraries, and highly recommended for larger public libraries." ―Choice

"It is a pleasure to recommend with wholehearted enthusiasm David Murray's Forked Tongues." ―Western American Literature

About this title

Book Description

A Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 1992

Review

Moving beyond the linguistic truism that an exact equivalency between a text and its translation is impossible, Murray argues that claims for authenticity in the translation of Native American texts are ideologically loaded by the various social and political needs that motivate the act of translation. In doing so, the translator simultaneously displaces and disempowers the native speaker while authenticating himself as able to legitimately and accurately represent form and intent of native discourse. The displacement is rooted in the assumption of most translators about the wholeness of meaning within a closed system of language and culture, a notion Murray effectively deconstructs. Much of the power of Murray's slim volume derives from his clear, forcefully written demonstration of the sociocultural problematics of translation across a number of genres, including oratory, autobiography, and contemporary anthropological textualizations. Both as argument and as demonstration, Murray's book establishes itself as the single best introduction to Native American text-making in particular and the betrayals of the translation in general. An essential acquisition for all college and university libraries, and highly recommended for larger public libraries.June 1992 (A. O. Wiget New Mexico State University)

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253206502
• ISBN 13: 9780253206503
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 188