A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity
A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity

Author: Mary Butler Renville

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2012-06-01

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0803243448

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This edition of A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity rescues from obscurity a crucially important work about the bitterly contested U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Written by Mary Butler Renville, an Anglo woman, with the assistance of her Dakota husband, John Baptiste Renville, A Thrilling Narrative was printed only once as a book in 1863 and has not been republished since. The work details the Renvilles’ experiences as “captives” among their Dakota kin in the Upper Camp and chronicles the story of the Dakota Peace Party. Their sympathetic portrayal of those who opposed the war in 1862 combats the stereotypical view that most Dakotas supported it and illumines the injustice of their exile from Dakota homelands. From the authors’ unique perspective as an interracial couple, they paint a complex picture of race, gender, and class relations on successive midwestern frontiers. As the state of Minnesota commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Dakota War, this narrative provides fresh insights into the most controversial event in the region’s history. This annotated edition includes groundbreaking historical and literary contexts for the text and a first-time collection of extant Dakota correspondence with authorities during the war.

The Dime Novel Companion
The Dime Novel Companion

Author: J Randolph Cox

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2000-05-30

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0313095361

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This encyclopedic guide to the American dime novel contains over 1,200 entries on serial publications, major writers and editors, publishers, and major characters, fiction genres, themes, and locales. An introduction provides a brief history of the dime novel. A discussion of dime novel scholarship includes a selected directory of libraries and museums with significant collections of dime novels. An appendix contains a publishing chronology of the more than 300 serial publications, and a selected bibliography suggests further reading. This comprehensive reference will appeal to popular culture scholars and to dime novel collectors. As an important research tool, entries are cross-referenced throughout. An index is included.

American Vaudeville as Ritual
American Vaudeville as Ritual

Author: Albert F. McLeanJr.

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-10-21

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0813184797

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This study affords an entirely new view of the nature of modern popular entertainment. American vaudeville is here regarded as the carefully elaborated ritual serving the different and paradoxical myth of the new urban folk. It demonstrates that the compulsive myth-making faculty in man is not limited to primitive ethnic groups or to serious art, that vaudeville cannot be dismissed as meaningless and irrelevant simply because it fits neither the criteria of formal criticsm or the familiar patterns of anthropological study. Using the methods for criticism developed by Susanne K. Langer and others, the author evaluates American vaudeville as a symbolic manifestation of basic values shared by the American people during the period 1885-1930. By examining vaudeville as folk ritual, the book reveals the unconscious symbolism basic to vaudeville-in its humor, magic, animal acts, music, and playlets, and also in the performers and the managers—which gave form to the dominant American myth of success. This striking view of the new mass man as a folk and of his mythology rooted in the very empirical science devoted to dispelling myth has implications for the serious study of all forms of mass entertainment in America. The book is illustrated with a number of striking photographs.