Native American Urban Narratives: Theodore Van Alst’s Sacred Smokes and Tommy Orange’s There There

The article examines the representation of Native American urban identity in Theodore Van Alst’s Sacred Smokes (2018) and Tommy Orange’s There There (2018). Drawing upon Stuart Hall’s and James Clifford’s theories of identity and diaspora and Robert Young’s distinction between the “organic” and the “diasporizing” modes of hybridity, it analyzes hybrid strategies through which these texts define their characters’ complex diasporic experience and extend the literary tradition of “survivance.” The paper argues that by exploring the concepts of history, community, and home and by emphasizing the narrative, imaginative, and relational aspects of their characters’ traveling identities, Van Alst’s and Orange’s texts remain strongly rooted in Native cultural perspective, in particular the “synecdochic” sense of self and the literary trope of “homing.” It also maintains that these characters’ precarious diasporic situation, albeit confining, allows them the freedom to (re)imagine themselves and thereby transcend their unstable deterritorialized and transcultural position and the realities of dispersal and alienation by inventing new modes of self-coherence and cultural continuity

Reimagining the Frontier in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks

This paper interprets Louise Erdrich’s novel Tracks in light of Louis Owens’ frontier theory. According to Owens, the concept of the frontier encompasses not just the physical terrain but also the psychological and cognitive aspects of the colonial encounter. It is a dangerously unstable, indeterminate and hybridized space that refuses to be confined through boundaries and serves as a dynamic zone of resistance. Utilizing the conventions of magical realism and the grotesque, Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks (1988) creates such a frontier zone in which the discourse of hegemony is estranged, and power relations reworked and reversed

Wabigoon River Poems

The article discusses contemporary indigenous poetry, focusing on Wabigoon River Poems (2015) collection by Canadian aboriginal writer David Groulx

REMAPPING THE BOUNDARIES: THE NOVELISTIC LANDSCAPE OF LESLIE MARMON SILKO’S STORYTELLER

Ovaj rad propituje žanrovsku hibridnost u djelu Storyteller (1981.) indijanske spisateljice Leslie Marmon Silko kao sredstvo sinkroniziranja privatne i javne povijesti, stvaranja sinegdohijskoga odnosa između individualnoga i društvenoga te isticanja nužnosti konceptualne reorijentacije zapadnoga čitatelja pri spoznaji toga odnosa. Svojim pomakom prema usmenom diskursu Silkin roman širi obzor zapadnoga žanra propitujući njegove pripovjedne, autorske i recepcijske konvencije te pripadajuću epistemologiju vremena i prostora. Ubrizgavajući oćut kolektivnosti u tradicionalni zapadni koncept osobne naracije, Silko poseže za svetom poviješću Laguna Pueblo naroda kako bi istaknula važnost pripovijedanja pri oblikovanju i očuvanju identiteta zajednice. Prekoračenjem granice između fiktivnoga i zbiljskoga, svjetovnoga i mitskoga, Storyteller upućuje i na moć pripovijedanja koja istodobno transcendira i oblikuje materijalne granice zbilje. Analiza posebnu pozornost pridaje permutacijama kao stilskom sredstvu koje prožimlje postmoderne tehnike s konvencijama usmenoga pripovijedanja kako bi se naglasila varijabilnost usmenoga diskursa i omogućio njezin prijenos u pismeni oblik.The paper examines the generic hybridity in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller (1981) as a tool for synchronizing the private and the public history, emphasizing a synecdochic relationship between the individual and the communal, as well as the necessity of the Western readers’ conceptual reorientation for appreciating that relationship. Through its shift towards oral discourse, Silko’s novel stretches the horizon of the Western genre, challenging its narrative, authorial and receptional conventions, as well as its epistemology of space and time. Infusing a sense of collectivity into the traditional Western concept of personal narrative, Silko draws upon Laguna sacred history, delineating the importance of storytelling in shaping and preserving the communal identity. Transgressing the border between the fictional and the real, the secular and the mythic, Storyteller also conveys the power of storytelling to transcend material boundaries of the real and shape them at the same time. The analysis pays special attention to permutations, as a stylistic device that converges postmodern techniques with oral storytelling in order to exhibit the variability of the oral discourse and translate it into written form

Reimagining the Frontier in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks

This paper interprets Louise Erdrich’s novel Tracks in light of Louis Owens’ frontier theory. According to Owens, the concept of the frontier encompasses not just the physical terrain but also the psychological and cognitive aspects of the colonial encounter. It is a dangerously unstable, indeterminate and hybridized space that refuses to be confined through boundaries and serves as a dynamic zone of resistance. Utilizing the conventions of magical realism and the grotesque, Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks (1988) creates such a frontier zone in which the discourse of hegemony is estranged, and power relations reworked and reversed

Remapping the Boundaries: The Novelistic Landscape of Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller

The paper examines the generic hybridity in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller (1981) as a tool for synchronizing the private and the public history, emphasizing a synecdochic relationship between the individual and the communal, as well as the necessity of the Western readers’ conceptual reorientation for appreciating that relationship. Through its shift towards oral discourse, Silko’s novel stretches the horizon of the Western genre, challenging its narrative, authorial and receptional conventions, as well as its epistemology of space and time. Infusing a sense of collectivity into the traditional Western concept of personal narrative, Silko draws upon Laguna sacred history, delineating the importance of storytelling in shaping and preserving the communal identity. Transgressing the border between the fictional and the real, the secular and the mythic, Storyteller also conveys the power of storytelling to transcend material boundaries of the real and shape them at the same time. The analysis pays special attention to permutations, as a stylistic device that converges postmodern techniques with oral storytelling in order to exhibit the variability of the oral discourse and translate it into written form

Nova čitanja Joyceova Uliksa – književno-lingvistički pristup

This paper discusses the somewhat oxymoronic tie between Ulysses\u27 poststructuralist effect and its structural design. Observing the changes in the linguistic register and the corresponding syntactical modes in various episodes of the novel, it points at a gradual reduction of the authorial voice and its ultimate displacement by the text itself. Whereas the first episodes of the novel are controlled by a public narrative voice, an obvious narrative switch occurs in the episode “Lestrygonians”, in which the narrative persona turns from heterogdiegetic to homodiegetic, almost blending with the protagonist Leopold Bloom. That becomes even more obvious in the chapter “Scylla and Charybdis”, marked by a complete substitution of the public narrator with an internal focalizer. As the role of the narrative agent shifts from the diegetic to the mimetic pole, its authority gets restricted and subjected to the textual voice. The process of reading Ulysses thus necessarily comprises both the hermeneutic and the formal plane as the text develops its technical codes and conventions, forcing its own structure upon itself. Our interdisciplinary approach to Joyce’s text employs various methods for quantitative assessment, including syntax analysis, tokenization, part-of-speech tagging and corpus text analysis. The analysis utilizes two computer tools for analyzing corpora – Treetagger and Ngram Statistics Package (NSP) – to emphasize the structural discrepancies, differences in lexical units and lemma usage between various sections of the novel.Ovaj rad nastoji ukazati na naoko proturječnu povezanost između poststrukturalističke intencije i strukturalne dinamike romana Uliks Jamesa Joycea. Prateći promjene u jezičnom registru i pripadajućim sintaktičkim obrascima kroz različite epizode romana, analiza ukazuje na postupnu redukciju autorskog glasa te njegovu konačnu supstituciju samim tekstom. Dok prve epizode romana kontrolira javni pripovjedni glas, očigledan narativni pomak događa se u epizodi „Lestrygonians“ u kojoj se pripovjedač kreće od heterodijegetskog prema homodijegetskom polu, gotovo se stapajući s junakom Leopoldom Bloomom. To obilježje postaje još uočljivije u poglavlju „Scylla and Charybdis“ u kojem dolazi do potpune zamjene javnog pripovjedača fokalizatorom. Kako se uloga pripovjedne instance pomiče od dijegetskog prema mimetskom polu, njezin se autoritet reducira u korist tekstualnog glasa. Proces čitanja Uliksa stoga nužno zahvaća kako hermeneutički tako i formalni aspekt jer tekst razvija vlastite tehničke kodove i konvencije, primjenjujući na sebe vlastitu strukturu. Naš interdisciplinarni pristup Joyceovu tekstu uključuje različite metode kvantitativne analize, obuhvaćajući analizu sintakse, tokenizaciju, part-of-speech-označavanje i korpusnu analizu teksta. U analizi se koriste dva računalna programa za analizu korpusa – Treetagger i N-gram Statistics Package (NSP) – kako bi se naglasile strukturne nepodudarnosti i razlike u leksičkim jedinicama i uporabi različnica u pojedinim dijelovima romana

Wabigoon River Poems

The article discusses contemporary indigenous poetry, focusing on Wabigoon River Poems (2015) collection by Canadian aboriginal writer David Groulx