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

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).

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

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.

References

Allen, Paula Gunn. “Bringing Home the Fact: Tradition and Continuity in the Imagination.” Recovering The Word: Essays on Native American Literature. Ed. Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat. Berkeley: U of California P, 1987. 563–79. Print.
Google Scholar

Allen, Paula Gunn. Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook. Boston: Beacon, 1991. Print.
Google Scholar

Allen, Paula Gunn. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon, 1986. Print.
Google Scholar

Bell, Robert C. “Circular Design in Ceremony.” American Indian Quarterly 5 (1979): 47–62. Print.
Google Scholar

Benedict, Ruth. “Eight Stories from Acoma.” Journal of American Folklore 43.167 (1930): 59–87. Print.
Google Scholar

Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture. New York: First Mariner, 2005. Print.
Google Scholar

Blaeser, Kimberly M. Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1996. Print.
Google Scholar

Boas, Franz. Keresan Texts. New York: American Ethnological Society, 1928. Print.
Google Scholar

Chapman, Mary. “‘The Belly of this Story’: Storytelling and Symbolic Birth in Native American Fiction.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 7.2 (Summer 1995): 4–16. Print.
Google Scholar

Chavkin, Allan, ed. Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony.” A Casebook. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
Google Scholar

Deloria, Vine Jr. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. New York: Avon, 1969. Print.
Google Scholar

Gunn, John Malcolm. “Schat-chen: History, Traditions and Naratives of the Queres Indians of Laguna and Acoma.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 5.1 (Spring 1993): 25–30. Print.
Google Scholar

Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998. Print.
Google Scholar

Hynes, William J. “Mapping the Characteristics of Mythic Tricksters: A Heuristic Guide.” Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms. Ed. William J. Hynes and William G. Doty. Tuscaloosa: Alabama UP, 1993. 33–45. Print.
Google Scholar

Hynes, William J. and William G. Doty. “Introducing the Fascinating and Perplexing Trickster Figure.” Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms. Ed. William J. Hynes and William G. Doty. Tuscaloosa: Alabama UP, 1993. 1–12. Print.
Google Scholar

Jahner, Elaine. “An Act of Attention: Event Structure in Ceremony.” Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony.” A Casebook. Ed. Allan Chavkin. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. 41–50. Print.
Google Scholar

Kocot, Monika. “Games with Kitsch in the Works of Sherman Alexie and Thomas King.” Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture. Ed. Justyna Stępień. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014. 99–112. Print.
Google Scholar

Kocot, Monika. “‘Our Island in the Flood on the Turtle’s Back’: Images of the Flood in Daniel David Moses’s Aazhoodena: The Place of the Heart.” Perspectives on Canada—International Canadian Studies despite Harper and Trudeau. Ed. Barbara Butrymowska and Uwe Zagratzki. Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac, 2018. 225–47. Print.
Google Scholar

Kocot, Monika. Playing Games of Sense in Edwin Morgan’s Writing. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016. Print.
Google Scholar

Kocot, Monika. “Płynna tożsamość—oblicza trickstera w powieściach Indian Ameryki Północnej.” Dyskursy o kulturze. Ed. Rafał Mielczarek and Michał Skorzycki. Łódź: SAN, 2012. 83–102. Print.
Google Scholar

Kocot, Monika. “Post-Indian Warriors of Simulation: Sherman Alexie’s Flight as a ‘Story of Survivance.’” The Post-Marked World: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century. Ed. Krystyna Kujawińska Courtney, Izabella Penier and Sumit Chakrabarti. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2013. 139– 52. Print.
Google Scholar

Kocot, Monika. “Rewizje historyczne we współczesnej powieści indiańskiej.” Historia w wersji popularnej. Ed. Izabela Kowalczyk and Izolda Kiec. Gdańsk: Katedra Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 2015. 164–84. Print.
Google Scholar

Kocot, Monika. “The Whittrick Play of No Nothing: Alan Spence, Edwin Morgan, and Indra’s Net.” Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture 8 (2018): 189–211. Print.
Google Scholar

Kocot, Monika. “Trickster Discourse: the Figure of Whittrick in Edwin Morgan’s Writing.” Visions and Revisions. Studies in Literature and Culture. Ed. Grzegorz Czemiel et al. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015. 49–58. Print.
Google Scholar

Kocot, Monika. “‘Tricksterowa hermeneutyka’ a procesualność lektury—próba (od) czytania Ceremony Leslie Marmon Silko.” Prze(d)sądy o czytaniu kultury. Ed. Julian Czurko and Michał Wróblewski. Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2014. 165–78. Print.
Google Scholar

Krupat, Arnold. “Post-Structuralism and Oral Literature.” Recovering the Word. Essays on Native American Literature. Ed. Brian Swan and Arnold Krupat. Berkeley: U of California P, 1987. 113–28. Print.
Google Scholar

Krupat, Arnold. The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989. Print.
Google Scholar

Lincoln, Kenneth. Native American Renaissance. Berkeley: U of California P, 1983. Print.
Google Scholar

Lutz, Hartmut. Contemporary Achievements. Contextualizing Canadian Aboriginal Literatures. Studies in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures. Volume 6. Ed. Martin Kuester. Augsburg: Wissner-Verlag, 2015. Print.
Google Scholar

Mariani, Giorgio. Post-Tribal Epics: The Native American Novel Between Tradition and Modernity. Lewinston: Edwin Mellen, 1996. Print.
Google Scholar

Morgan, Winifred. The Trickster Figure in American Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print.
Google Scholar

Nelson, Robert M. Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony”: The Recovery of Tradition. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Print.
Google Scholar

Nelson, Robert M. “The Function of the Landscape of Ceremony.” Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony.” A Casebook. Ed. Allan Chavkin. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. 139–74. Print.
Google Scholar

Owens, Louis. Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1992. Print.
Google Scholar

Purdy, John. “The Transformation: Tayo’s Geneaology in Ceremony.” Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony.” A Casebook. Ed. Allan Chavkin. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. 63–70. Print.
Google Scholar

Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. New York: Schocken, 1956. Print.
Google Scholar

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin, 1977. Print.
Google Scholar

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Storyteller. New York: Arcade, 1981. Print.
Google Scholar

Swan, Edith. “Healing via the Sunwise Cycle in Silko’s Ceremony.” American Indian Quarterly 12 (1988): 313–28. Print.
Google Scholar

Swan, Edith. “Laguna Symbolic Geography and Silko’s Ceremony.” American Indian Quarterly 12 (1988): 229–49. Print.
Google Scholar

Turner, Victor. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.” Rice University Studies 60.3 (1974): 53–92. Print.
Google Scholar

Vizenor, Gerald. Earthdivers: Tribal Narratives on Mixed Descent. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1981. Print.
Google Scholar

Vizenor, Gerald. Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1994. Print.
Google Scholar

Vizenor, Gerald. Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures. Ed. Gerald Vizenor. New York: U of Oklahoma P, 1993. Print.
Google Scholar

Downloads

Published

2019-11-23

How to Cite

Kocot, M. (2019). On Unruly Text, or Text-Trickster: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony as Healing. Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture, (9), 292–315. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.09.18