On Unruly Text, or Text-Trickster: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony as Healing

Monika Kocot

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.09.18

Authors

Monika Kocot University of Łódź

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.09.18

Keywords:

trickster, healing, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

Abstract

The article discusses Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony with a focus on textual manifestations of the figure of the trickster. The theme of shape-shifting and transformation that one usually associates with tricksters is linked here with the theme of (non)dualist timespace, the notion of interbeing, which in turn introduces the theme of trauma healing. The author combines two perspectives—Paula Gunn Allen’s view on timespace in her The Sacred Hoop, and Gerald Vizenor’s writings concerning trickster aesthetics—in order to show that the narrative structure of the novel can also be seen as an embodiment of the trickster: trickster-timespace, trickster-relation, and trickster-processuality; these three manifestations of the trickster are analyzed from the perspective of one more actualization of the trickster, that of a psychopomp, the “Guide of Souls” (which is manifested both at the level of plot and narration).

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Author Biography

Monika Kocot, University of Łódź

Monika Kocot, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of British Literature and Culture at the University of Łódź, Poland. Her academic interests include: contemporary British and Polish poetry, Native American prose and poetry, literary theory, literary criticism and translation. She is the author of Playing Games of Sense in Edwin Morgan’s Writing (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016) and co-editor of Języki (pop)kultury w literaturze, mediach i filmie (Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2015), and Nie tylko Ishiguro. Szkice o literaturze anglojęzycznej w Polsce (Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2019). She is a member of the Association for Cultural Studies, the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, and Polish Cognitive Linguistics Association. She is the President of The K. K. Baczynski Literary Society.

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