The Turn To The Native: Criticism And Culture

he concept of canon is viewed generally under the preface of an authoritative list of works that are the basis for all literary judgement, standard, and criterion. Yet, the statement of what canon is and what actually goes into the canon is often called into question. Is canon all-encompassing under one singular umbrella or are there separate canons for separate literary works? When bringing focus into the Western Canon, what exactly goes into it? Common knowledge would state authors such as Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, and Dickinson; but even more goes into it. These authors are not placed under the canon for being equally the same; they are put into the canon for creating a new literary standard. They definitely do no write about the same subjects,

Appiah identifies the first stage of an African postcolonial literature as a representation by certain novels of the 1950s and 1960s that were “theorized as the imaginative recreation of a common cultural past that [was] crafted into a shared tradition by the writer.” These novels “authorize a ‘return to traditions” in the pursuit of “realist legitimations of nationalism.” Yet this “return to traditions,” while signaling a return to the ethos and practices suggested by a pre-colonial past, is also a conscious construct –an “Invented tradition.”
In their goal to become a separate canon, Native American’s have in a sense, created an invented tradition in the hopes of returning to their traditions. The Native American authors are indeed writing to Euro-ethnic American audiences in the hope to allowing them to understand their identity, sovereignty, and traditions. In their goal to become separate, they have indeed become equals. Their writing styles have taken on Western form and style, the literary pieces are created in a multitude of lenses to appeal to the populace, and in the end, Native Americans, are still