Buried in Shades of Night: Contested Voices, Indian Captivity, and the Legacy of King Philip's War - Softcover

Stratton, Billy J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816531382 ISBN 13: 9780816531387

Publisher: University of Arizona Press, 2014

Synopsis

The captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson, The Soveraignty and Goodness of God, published in 1682, is often considered the first “best seller” to be published in North America. Since then, it has long been read as a first-person account of the trials of Indian captivity. After an attack on the Puritan town of Lancaster, Massachusetts, in February 1676, Rowlandson was held prisoner for more than eleven weeks before eventually being ransomed. The account of her experiences, published six years later, soon took its place as an exemplar of the captivity narrative genre and a popular focal point of scholarly attention in the three hundred years since.

In this groundbreaking new book, Billy J. Stratton offers a critical examination of the narrative of Mary Rowlandson. Although it has long been thought that the book’s preface was written by the influential Puritan minister Increase Mather, Stratton’s research suggests that Mather was also deeply involved in the production of the narrative itself, which bears strong traces of a literary form that was already well established in Europe. As Stratton notes, the portrayal of Indian people as animalistic “savages” and of Rowlandson’s solace in Biblical exegesis served as a convenient alibi for the colonial aspirations of the Puritan leadership.

Stratton calls into question much that has been accepted as fact by scholars and historians over the last century, and re-centers the focus on the marginalized perspective of Native American people, including those whose land had been occupied by the Puritan settlers. In doing so, Stratton demands a careful reconsideration of the role that the captivity narrative—which was instrumental in shaping conceptions of “frontier warfare”—has played in the development of both American literary history and national identity.

About this title

From the Author

"Flourishing in the late seventeenth century--and extending into the twenty-first century through accounts of prisoners of war such as Jessica Lynch, a multitude of others taken prisoner in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as hostages taken by Somali pirates--the image of the captive remains an enduring literary figure. Narratives of captivity have proven to be essential instruments of ideology and particularly adaptive vehicles for the dissemination of hegemonic knowledge in the name of historical discourse. Much more than simply representing events as they occurred, Indian captivity narratives became a popular means by which colonial writers (re)presented the "Horrors of Indian Warfare"--to use the title of a popular nineteenth-century historical text--to a fervent American public whose desire for Native land seemed insatiable." --From the Introduction, Buried In Shades of Night: Contested Voices, Indian Captivity and the Legacy of King Philip's War

About the Author

Billy J. Stratton holds a PhD in American Indian studies and is an associate professor of English at the University of Denver.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0816531382
• ISBN 13: 9780816531387
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224