Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of a Literary Nation

by Sarah Rivett

Overview

In 1664, French Jesuit Louis Nicolas arrived in Quebec. Upon first hearing Ojibwe, Nicolas observed that he had encountered the most barbaric language in the world--but after listening to and studying approximately fifteen Algonquian languages over a ten-year period, he wrote that he had "discovered all of the secrets of the most beautiful languages in the universe." Unscripted America is a study of how colonists in North America struggled to understand, translate, and interpret Native American languages, and the significance of these languages for theological and cosmological issues such as the origins of Amerindian populations, their relationship to Eurasian and Biblical peoples, and the origins of language itself. Through a close analysis of previously overlooked texts, Unscripted America places American Indian languages within transatlantic intellectual history, while also demonstrating how American letters emerged in the 1810s through 1830s via a complex and hitherto unexplored engagement with the legacies and aesthetic possibilities of indigenous words. Unscripted America contends that what scholars have more traditionally understood through the Romantic ideology of the noble savage, a vessel of antiquity among dying populations, was in fact a palimpsest of still-living indigenous populations whose presence in American literature remains traceable through words. By examining the foundation of the literary nation through language, writing, and literacy, Unscripted America revisits common conceptions regarding "early america" and its origins to demonstrate how the understanding of America developed out of a steadfast connection to American Indians, both past and present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190492588
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/27/2017
Series:	Oxford Studies in American Literary History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Sarah Rivett is Associate Professor of English at Princeton University and the author of The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (UNC Press, 2011), which won the Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. The 'Savage Sounds' of Christian Translation: How Missionaries Confronted the Limits of Universalism in Early America 2. Learning to Write Algonquian Letters: The Indigenous Place of Language Philosophy in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World 3. Local Linguistics and Indigenous Cosmologies of the Early Eighteenth Century Atlantic World 4. Imperial Millennialism and the Battle for American Indian Souls 5. The Nature of Indian Words in the Rise of Anglo-American Nativism 6. Franco-Catholic Communication and Indian Alliance in the Seven Years War 7. Unruly Empiricisms and Linguistic Sovereignty in Thomas Jefferson's Indian Vocabulary Project 8. Indigenous Metaphors and the Philosophy of History in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales Coda: Remembered Forms of a Literary Nation Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"Rivett's interventions are as numerous as her readings and also affect Native studies. It is especially her side by side readings of French and English sources that both respond to a long-identified need for multilingual work in early American studies and do so inways that are simultaneously rigorous and innovative." — Joanne van der Woude, The New England Quarterly

"Unscripted America is a meaningful contribution to a surge in scholarship that has explored the relation between intellectual history, Native studies, and the literary history of colonial America and the early US republic. Its focus on the scientific study of indigenous languages makes it particularly worth reading ... Rivett offers a scrupulously detailed study of the cultural history of the colonial Americas, a simultaneously wide-ranging and deeply probing account of the linguistic exchanges at the heart of colonial encounter. Making thought-provoking connections between linguistic and theological writings and the literatures of the early republic, Unscripted America is an indispensable text for scholars examining the history of cultural exchange in Native North America." — Frank Kelderman, H-Net

"Unscripted America is an enthralling work of cultural history that brings together early American literature, theology, and indigenous studies in original ways ... Rivett's scholarly achievements in Unscripted America are many and meaningful." — Daniel Dewispelare, Notes and Queries

"This book is an account of encounter and (dis)encounter. Coming from the field of literary history [...] the author's study of the missionary linguistics of colonial North America deserves our attention because, reading beyond the lines, it is not just about the history. The problems of mistranslation, misinterpretation, and appropriation discussed by the author are faced by all field researchers working in indigenous communities today." —International Journal of American Linguistics

"Unscripted America is a meaningful contribution to a surge in scholarship that has explored the relation between intellectual history, Native studies, and the literary history of colonial America and the early US republic. Its focus on the scientific study of indigenous languages makes it particularly worth reading [...] Making thought-provoking connections between linguistic and theological writings and the literatures of the early republic, Unscripted America is an indispensable text for scholars examining the history of cultural exchange in Native North America." —H-Net

"This book is an account of encounter and (dis)encounter. Coming from the field of literary history [...] the author's study of the missionary linguistics of colonial North America deserves our attention because, reading beyond the lines, it is not just about the history. The problems of mistranslation, misinterpretation, and appropriation discussed by the author are faced by all field researchers working in indigenous communities today." —International Journal of American Linguistics

"Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries." —E. J. Vajda, CHOICE

"A rich intellectual and literary history, Rivett's Unscripted America makes a highly original argument about the role of indigenous languages in the formation of early American literature. The book places at the center of its story the Native interlocutors who spoke, translated, and explained their languages to Europeans, and it shows how they actively shaped the written record that sought to represent and control them as merely passive conveyers of transparent meaning. Rivett's ability to move between comparative European philology, a wide variety of early American sources, and recent theoretical contributions in Native studies is dazzling." —Anna Brickhouse, University of Virginia

"Unscripted America is an important comparative and transcultural study of the deep connections between early American missionary linguistics in colonial New England and New France, American literary history, and Western intellectual history at the intersection of religion and science from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Rigorously researched and lucidly written, Unscripted America shows how the notion of the sacred power of indigenous words persists in American literature, despite Euro-American attempts to relegate Indians to an ancient and unrecoverable past." —Ralph Bauer, University of Maryland

"Unscripted America is a necessary and timely celebration of Native American linguistic contributions to American literature, history, and creative spirit. Sarah Rivett's insightful analysis is a sensitive and thought-provoking exploration of linguistic encounters between America's First Nations of the Northeast and colonial/settler societies. Rivett deftly shares with readers the importance of understanding North America's complicated literary and linguistic past so that we may recognize how deeply Native America continues to contribute to America's literary and linguistic imaginaries." —Bernard Perley, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

From the Publisher