This book takes a fascinating look at the iconic figure of the Native American in the British cultural imagination from the Revolutionary War to the early twentieth century, and examining how Native Americans regarded the British, as well as how they challenged their own cultural image in Britain during this period. Kate Flint shows how the image of the Indian was used in English literature and culture for a host of ideological purposes, and she reveals its crucial role as symbol, cultural myth, and stereotype that helped to define British identity and its attitude toward the colonial world.
Through close readings of writers such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and D. H. Lawrence, Flint traces how the figure of the Indian was received, represented, and transformed in British fiction and poetry, travelogues, sketches, and journalism, as well as theater, paintings, and cinema. She describes the experiences of the Ojibwa and Ioway who toured Britain with George Catlin in the 1840s; the testimonies of the Indians in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show; and the performances and polemics of the Iroquois poet Pauline Johnson in London. Flint explores transatlantic conceptions of race, the role of gender in writings by and about Indians, and the complex political and economic relationships between Britain and America.
The Transatlantic Indian, 1776-1930 argues that native perspectives are essential to our understanding of transatlantic relations in this period and the development of transnational modernity.
"This extraordinarily capacious, academically sound study broadens the field of Victorian studies."--Choice
"It is in any case no surprise to report that Flint's readings of her sources are always searching and nuanced. The book is also very light on jargon; it is too intellectually confident for that. This will be a major text in the burgeoning field of transantlantic studies. It offers a distinctive portrait of Victorian culture that we have not seen before."--Rohan McWilliam, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
"Kate Flint's scholarly work is a fascinating and ground-breaking study of the Indian as both imagined in literature and visible in transatlantic encounters and exchanges. . . . Her extensive knowledge of both Victorian society and culture and tribal histories and cultures is evident throughout the work. . . . Flint's work establishes fruitful links with recent scholarship and debates which have successfully placed the Indian in a transatlantic perspective."--Mandy Cooper, Journal of Transatlantic Studies
"The Transatlantic Indian succeeds admirably in surveying the transatlantic exchanges between Native Americans and British readers and writers during the long nineteenth century."--Siohban Carroll, English Literature in Transition
"This beautifully researched project contributes a sweeping synthesis, but its virtues go much farther. . . . Flint pulls off the tricky combination of a tight argument with an exploratory format. Delicate readings of slippery texts will impress literary scholars, while historians will appreciate the book's temporal and cultural scope and its broad range of prosaic and canonical sources. . . . [T]his is a book to relish, ruminate over, and revisit."--Rebecca R. Noel, Literature and History
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations ix
Chapter One: Figuring America 1
Chapter Two: The Romantic Indian 26
Chapter Three: "Brought to the Zenith of Civilization": Indians in England in the 1840s 53
Chapter Four: Sentiment and Anger: British Women Writers and Native Americans 86
Chapter Five: Is the Indian an American? 112
Chapter Six: Savagery and Nationalism: Native Americans and Popular Fiction 136
Chapter Seven: Indians and the Politics of Gender 167
Chapter Eight: Indians and Missionaries 192
Chapter Nine: Buffalo Bill's Wild West and English Identity 226
Chapter Ten: Indian Frontiers 256
Conclusion: Indians, Modernity, and History 288