Critical Approaches to Ceremony

Critical Approaches to Silko’s Ceremony

Narrative structure: Is it as postmodernist text? Magic Realism? Or . . .
Folklore: How does the text use Keresan, Pueblo, and Dine (Navajo) oral stories? How does it negotiate these with the expectations of a novel in English?

Gender/feminism: Looks at how gender is represented and challenged in the text.

Postcolonial: Looks at the novel as a text that exposes and challenges the history and effects of colonization of the area, possibly offering counter-narratives.

Rhetorical: looks at the novel as a rhetorical act, as pitched toward specific, but quite different audiences and how the author does that. Can also look at the rhetoric of the criticism of the novel, reviews, the reception and analyze patterns of response.

Literary History: Looks at the novel’s place in the emergent tradition of American Indian literature written in English. Compares the novel to other novels in that ‘canon.’ Deals with all of the above in the context of representing a literary history.

Ideological/Marxist/semiotics: Analyzes the semiotic codes of the text in terms of belief systems, some articulated (as in “I believe in the American dream.”); some not articulated, but assumed (Property is a basic right of the people, er, uh, white people, that is.). Critiques the novel in terms of ideologies of class, race, gender. Sometimes combines with postcolonial, feminist, and others.

Eco-criticism/ecofeminism: Views the novel as a landmark text in revising our screwed up relationship with the earth. Its basic metaphor is ecology, seeing nature and people as intertwined in a complex, interactive web of life.

Psychological: May use Freud, Lacan, and others to discuss how the novel presents sanity, loss of sanity, oedipal relationships, family dynamics.