The genre of the captivity narrative is closely connected both historically and ideologically with the colonization of the Americas. The genre emerged in the 1550s, when Hans Staden published an...Show moreThe genre of the captivity narrative is closely connected both historically and ideologically with the colonization of the Americas. The genre emerged in the 1550s, when Hans Staden published an account of his Brazilian captivity in True Story and Description of a Country of Wild, Naked, Grim, Man-eating People in the New World, America in 1557 (Michaela Schmolz-Haberlein 745). In 1575, Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda published Memoir on the Country and Ancient Indian Tribes of Florida, in which he describes his captivity with the Calusa Indians. The first example of a captivity narrative in colonial North America is Mary Rowlandson’s The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), which became the prototype of the genre in American literature. These three early autobiographical narratives and the fictional captivity narratives that were produced in their wake offer the colonizer’s perspective on the often violent conflicts and cultural encounters between European colonizers and the indigenous population that are a central theme in the genre. In this thesis I will focus on the ideological and cultural work that the captivity narrative performs, both in Mary Rowlandson’s prototypical narrative and Kevin Costner’s 1990 film Dances with Wolves, which presents itself as a kind of counter-captivity narrative. I will do so by providing a comparative close reading of the text and the film in their cultural context.Show less
