Queequeg's Coffin: Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature

222 Pages·2012·0.903 MB·English

by  Birgit Brander Rasmussen

Queequeg’s Co≈n

QUEEQUEG’S
COFFIN
?
Indigenous Literacies &
Early American Literature
birgit brander rasmussen
duke university press
Durham & London 2012
∫ 2012 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper $
Designed by Jennifer Hill.
Typeset in Quadraat by
Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on
the last printed page of this book.
Published with the assistance of the
Frederick W. Hilles Publication Fund
of Yale University.
For my children
Eva and Tobias Arne
and
in loving memory of
my mother
Karin Beathe Rasmussen

We Americans have yet to
really learn our own antecedents. . . .
They will be found ampler as
has been supposed, and in widely
di√erent sources. Thus far, impress’d
by New England writers and
schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon
ourselves to the notion that our
United States have been fashioned
from the British Islands only—which
is a very great mistake.
walt whitman

contents
Acknowledgments xi
introduction. ‘‘a new world still in the making’’
1
∞ writing and colonial conflict
17
≤ negotiating peace, negotiating literacies
The Undetermined Encounter and Early American Literature
49
≥ writing in the conflict zone
Don Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno
79
∂ indigenous literacies, moby-dick, and the
promise of queequeg’s coffin
111
Afterword 139
Notes 145
Works Cited 185
Index 201