Reconstructing Reality

This book studies the revisionary mythmaking of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. More specifically, it explores Whitman's reworking of the Judeo-Christian Adamic myth in his "Children of Adam" poetry cluster, and Marmon Silko's reworking of Laguna Pueblo and Navajo conceptions of witchery as well as the effects of such a reworking upon her presentation of Laguna's foundational mythic narratives. This study considers each artist's respective contextual foundations and specific revisionary strategies and purposes. It inquires into how Whitman and Marmon Silko's engagement of mythic discourses functions within their poems/narratives; how it fulfills their socio-ideological agendas; how it interpellates readers as participants in their presented mythic (re)visions; and, ultimately, how it interpolates hegemonic societal conceptions of reality and offers more fully integrated approaches toward life.

Autorentext

Sheri Chriqui's studies focus on the culturally transformative potential that the presence of a mythic discourse, and the revisionary use of mythic narratives, grants a literary text, as well as the reconstructive implications of such revisions for socio-cultural perceptions of reality. She is an English teacher in the Los Angeles area.

Klappentext

This book studies the revisionary mythmaking of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. More specifically, it explores Whitman's reworking of the Judeo-Christian Adamic myth in his "Children of Adam" poetry cluster, and Marmon Silko's reworking of Laguna Pueblo and Navajo conceptions of witchery- as well as the effects of such a reworking upon her presentation of Laguna's foundational mythic narratives. This study considers each artist's respective contextual foundations and specific revisionary strategies and purposes. It inquires into how Whitman and Marmon Silko's engagement of mythic discourses functions within their poems/narratives; how it fulfills their socio-ideological agendas; how it interpellates readers as participants in their presented mythic (re)visions; and, ultimately, how it interpolates hegemonic societal conceptions of reality and offers more fully integrated approaches toward life.