Prof. Bruce Harvey

Indian Literature Review Sheet

FACTORS TO KEEP IN MIND:

1)  Try to envision oratorical setting: facial expressions/physical gestures simulate characters' reactions or personalities

2)  Forget Western culture's notions of a well-sculpted plot: no character biographies, rising action, etc.

3)  Forget your Judeo-Christian-Classical preoccupation with major character flaw/sin: stories aren't usually about some individual's angst (there are no Indian Hamlets)

4) Keep in mind stories may be about sacred stuff, social dynamics, entertainment all at the same time: we make distinctions between Bible, The Great Gatsby , and How to Win Friends and Influence People; Indians may not have

5) We understand are own stories differently (or may not understand at all): remember the example of how a child, adult, anthropologist from Mars, U.S. sociologist, all might differently interpret a narrative of Halloween.  Would the same apply to Indians?

6)  Don't sentimentalize: Indians had "respect" for nature, but did not romanticize it (you need to be separated from nature to do the latter)

EXAMPLE OF ENVIRONMENT/SURVIVAL INTERPRETATION: STONEMAN

--Stoneman/cannibal creatures are associated with winter

--menstruating women = taboo = bad for hunting (sometimes) but also powerful

--in winter (archaic memories of migration from North?) fear of starvation=threat of cannibalism=remember spring when fertility returns=snow/stoneman melts

EXAMPLE OF CULTURAL "UNCONSCIOUS" INTERPRETATION: YOUNGER BROTHER

--1st, get sense of basic episodes—this is what professional ethnographers do (comparing variations of a tale within/between tribes)

--2nd, go to sociological explanations

--watch out for women: some might be witches

--kinship relations can get violent and complicated               

--3rd, go for physiological/sexual

--boys/men worried about women/sexuality (whether sex is aggressive, etc.)

--vagina dentata=widespread image in many cultures' folklore

--4th, try to link all elements (food, inside/outside, engulfment, mothering/witch) into one master antithesis of the archaic/collective unconscious (or of male collective unconscious?)

--fear of mother becoming cruel/castrating witch

--or just look at it as a eat or be eaten story

--sounds wacky: but think of "Aliens" and all the themes of mothering/ingestion, etc.: not dissimilar