A New Continent of Liberty: Eunomia in Native American Literature from Occom to Erdrich

The first book to chart autonomy's conceptual growth in Native American literature from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century, A New Continent of Liberty examines, against the backdrop of Euro-American literature, how Native American authors have sought to reclaim and redefine distinctive versions of an ideal of self-rule grounded in the natural world. Beginning with the writings of Samson Occom, and extending through a range of fiction and nonfiction works by William Apess, Sarah Winnemucca, Zitkala-Sa, N. Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor, and Louise Erdrich, Geoff Hamilton sketches a movement of gradual but resolute ascent: from often desperate early efforts, pitted against the historical realities of genocide and cultural annihilation, to preserve any sense of self and community, toward expressions of a resurgent autonomy that affirm new, iIndigenous models of eunomia, a fertile blending of human and natural orders.

Author(s): Geoff Hamilton
Published: 2019-04-10
Pages: 200
Categories: Literary Criticism