Narrative- Photographic Emplotment of Native American Collective Memories and History in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storytelling

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Authors

1 Central Tehran Branch

2 استادیار زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی، واحد بروجرد، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، بروجرد

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the multiple structure of storytelling in Storyteller (1981) by Leslie Marmon Silko (1946- ), an Indian American author using the ideas of Hayden White, Susan Sontag, and Roland Barthes, and to provide a histor- ical-artistic reading concerning the role of images within the photographs which are intertwined with the culture, life and history of the people of Leguna Pueblo and Silko’s narratives. In other words, the structural and aesthetic relationship between photog- raphy, collective and individual memory, history and storytelling is examined. Having 



used Lee Marmon’s photographs and traditional narratives of past Silko, similar to a historian, interweaves what happened in the past into a narrative emplotment. In addition, according to White’s view that history is a kind of narrative whose closest relation is with fiction, it can be pointed out that the interpretive patterns of historians are a bridge between the two worlds of history and literature. The photographs in this work are visual-historical documents that record a choherent structure of past experi- ences and events at a specific time and place, which like the historical discourse and remnants enter the realm of time. Thus, from the perspective of modern historiography, these photographs themselves become historical events and are part of the process of decoding the historical events of a nation. Silko’s narratives along with the art of photography and historiography creates a kind of multiple narrative literature and discourse of literary historiography.

Keywords

References

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Critical Language and Literary studies
Volume 17, Issue 25
January 2021
Pages 140-163

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