Eng11 Advanced and Regular: Begin Mary Rowlandson

September 22, 2008

Read The Account of Mary Rowlandson (paperback) pages 58-86

Take careful notes, collecting quotes that relate to one of these topics:

1. Her use of scriptures
2. Her views of nature and the landscape
3. Her attitude toward the Indians

You will need to write a 500-word essay about one of these topics.

The reading and notetaking phase needs to be finished before class on Wednesday.

Richard Slotkin in his book Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier 1600-1860 (Harper Perennial, 1996), claims captivity narratives as the first coherent mythic literature of America. Beginning with Mary Rowlandson’s immensely popular account of her life among American Indians (1682), hundreds of captivity narratives recounted stories of kidnapping by Indians. They remained a staple of popular literature into the nineteenth century. Captivity narratives became the stuff of folk tales and legends. In this genre are novels like James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1829) or films such as A Man Called Horse (1969).

While most associated with North America, other frontiers have generated their own captivity narratives. In Australia, for example, one of the most famous captivities followed a nineteenth-century shipwreck on the Queensland coast. A survivor, Mrs Eliza Fraser, lived for some time among Aborigines. She was popularly represented as a vulnerable victim of cruel savages. Her story later provided the inspiration for Patrick White’s novel A Fringe of Leaves (1976).