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The word made animal flesh: Totemic archetypes in five Western North American writers
Abstract
Mystical motifs have been downplayed in literary analysis of twentieth-century texts. This is partially explained by the often unconscious tropes of ascent which govern many perceptions about mysticism. In these paradigms, the material world is often seen as something to be transcended; such models carry all kinds of assumptions about Assumption. Little wonder that animal mysticism, if considered at all, might then be dismissed as oxymoronic. The first part of this dissertation traces this attitude by centering on modern classic, anthropological, and Jungian explorations of mysticism. Classic scholarship comes close to an animal abstentia. While modern anthropologists have respect for animal mysticism (which is often associated with totemism) there are in many of these classic thinkers unconscious ascents from community and the indigenous to the individual and the established. Likewise, Jungians, though cognizant of the animal, still often associate this dimension with "the feminine" and the unconscious and implicitly advocate an ascent from this state to a higher, "masculine" plane. We need new mystical paradigms which appreciate the descent into the animal dimension and advocate neither the fight nor flight response. The five writers to be explored provide us with a basis for such paradigms. Sharon Butala critiques patriarchy in Luna by focusing on animal motifs in her goddess mythology. Rudolfo Anaya explores the descent into the underworld by centering on the turtle in Tortuga. Frank Waters uses the goat as a symbol of eclecticism in People of the Valley. Leslie Silko portrays the spider as a weaving, creative force in Ceremony. Gerald Vizenor celebrates the animal as trickster in his novels. Together, these writers cause us to expand not only our appreciation of the literary canon but the mystical canon as well.
Subject Area
Literature|Religion|American literature
Recommended Citation
Finlaw, William Whiticar, "The word made animal flesh: Totemic archetypes in five Western North American writers" (1993). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9333963.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9333963