Eating or Being Eaten: Symbolic Reversals in Louise Erdrich’s Poetic Mythology
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2019-10-31
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en
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The central claim of this thesis is that the poetry of Louise Erdrich
is built on a poetic mythology that reemploys the dynamic of the Trickster and the Wiindigoo
on several different levels. I take some characters, plot developments, and even relations
between words or phrases to be manifestations or incarnations of these mythical figures. As a
whole, the symbolic structure that emerges, I claim, functions as what Roland Barthes calls an
“artificial myth” (134)—a certain poetic form that pushes against the hegemony of the
dominant myths—in this case the myth or logic of Manifest Destiny. In fact, the mythologies
themselves become incarnations of the Trickster and the Wiindigoo. Like the Trickster, the
American Indian mythologies are eaten by the consuming force of settler-colonialism—the
Wiindigoo incarnate. The way that Erdrich writes against this force, moreover, mirrors the
Trickster’s liberation from the belly of the monster—providing personal and communal modes
of agency for Erdrich and her characters.
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Faculteit der Letteren