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Early Native American Literature and Oral Tradition

Early Native American Literature and Oral Tradition. Oral Literature: Myths and Legends. A. devices. 1. Repetition 2. Enumeration 3. Incremental development 4. Use of archaic language 5. Ritual beginning and end. 6. Specific structure

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Early Native American Literature and Oral Tradition

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  1. Early Native American Literature and Oral Tradition Oral Literature: Myths and Legends

  2. A. devices • 1. Repetition • 2. Enumeration • 3. Incremental development • 4. Use of archaic language • 5. Ritual beginning and end

  3. 6. Specific structure a. Introduction: harmonious situation b. Thesis: one or more episodes showing disruption of harmony c. Antithesis: measures employed to overcome disruption d. Conclusion: restored harmony completed by cycles of four or some power of four (four songs four nights, etc.) • 7. Terse style

  4. B. Functions • 1. Beliefs about nature of physical world 2. Beliefs about social order and appropriate behavior 3. Beliefs about human nature and the problem of good and evil

  5. C. Characteristics of Myths • 1. Myths: primal world  • 2. Beings are animals spirits in more or less human form: monsters, confusions of nature • 3. Mythic age flows into age of transformation (legends)

  6. D. Characteristics of Legends • 1. Culture hero or transformer orders the world  • 2. Culture hero or transformer turns animal people into animals  • 3. Other beings become landmarks  • 4. Flows into historical time (real heroes)

  7. E. Figures • 1. Culture heroes • a. Dramatize prototypical events and behaviors b. Show how to do what is right and how we become the people we are c. Shape the world and gives it its character by theft of sun, fire, or water d. Often of divine birth e. Myths are not concerned with original owners, only with culture hero's acquisition of them

  8. 2. Trickster heroes (Raven, Spider) a. Provide for disorder and change b. Enable us to see the seamy underside of life c. Remind us that culture is finally artificial d. Provide for the possibility of change e. May be overreachers who gets their comeuppance

  9. F. Themes • 1. Formation of the world through struggle and robbery (Pacific coast)  • 2. Movement from a sky world to a water world by means of a fall (Iroquoian)  • 3. Fortunate fall; creation story

  10. 4. Earth-diver myth a. flood that occurred after creation of the universe b. recreation of the present world out of mud brought up from under the water by the earth-diver (muskrat or waterbird) • 5. Theft of fire  • 6. Emergence myths: a. ascent of beings from under the surface of the earth to its surface b. ascent from a series of underworlds • 7. Migration myths: accompany emergence myths

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