Writing in the Oral Tradition: The Crisis of Self Representation in the American Native Literature: A Postmodern Reading of Gerald's Vizenor`s Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles
Fatin A. Abu Hilal, English Department, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan.
Abstract
In presenting a native American myth that blends with a postmodern fictional universe, Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles has remained challenging for readers who endeavor to fit it into a paradigm of Western criticism and literature. The particular postmodern substance of Bearheart breaks from modern trends in theory, literature and history. Even though the narrative conveys an oral tradition, clearly in its word game, intertextuality, structurless plot and characterization, Bearheart invokes the "upsetting" of many notions of truth, identity, language, cultural and literary authority, and authorship. This is posed against not only the theoretical structure of the Western literary text but also against the "cultural specificity" of some Indian values that constitute what Vizenor's calls "tribal creeds." Vizenor's presentation is complex as it also threatens different levels of "terminal theoretical creeds." Whether literary or nonliterary, sacred or secular, oral or textual, tribal or non-tribal, terminal creeds have left sweeping impacts on modern and postmodern histories, ideologies and cultures.