"Daniel Clément examines the "Bungling Host" tale known in a multitude of indigenous cultures in North America and beyond. In this groundbreaking work he reveals fuller meaning to these stories than previously recognized and underscores the limits of structuralism in understanding them"--

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Race, Language and Culture" by Franz Boas. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

These essays by linguists, folklorists, anthropologists, literary theorists, and poets, bring to a new level of sophistication the structural analysis of Native American literary expression. Their common concern is for the appreciation and elucidation of Native American song and story, and for a historical, philosophical, psychoanalytic, and linguistic kind of commentary. The essays address the overlapping issues of presentation and interpretation of Native American literature: How to present in writing an art that is primarily oral, dramatic, and performative? How to interpret that art, both in its traditional forms and in its later, written forms. ISBN 0-520-05790-2: $60.00.

Native American tricksters can be buffoons, transformers, social critics, teachers, and mediators between human beings, nature, and the gods. A vibrant part of American Indian tradition, the trickster has shown a remarkable ability to adapt into the twenty-first century. In Living Sideways, Franchot Ballinger provides the first full-length study of the diverse roles and dimensions of North American Indian tricksters. While honoring their diversity and complexity, he challenges stereotypical Euro-American treatments of tricksters. Drawing from the most influential scholarship on Native American tricksters, Ballinger shows how many critics have failed to consider both the specifics of trickster stories and their cultural contexts. Each chapter concentrates on a particular aspect of the trickster theme, such as the trickster’s ambiguous personality, the variety of trickster roles, and the trickster’s role as social critic. Ballinger further considers issues of sex, gender, and humor, the use of trickster tales as instructions on social values and community control, and the trickster as an emblem of modern Indian survival. Living Sideways also includes illustrative trickster stories at the end of each chapter, a comprehensive bibliography, and discussion of the literary aspects of tricksters. Examining both the sacred power of tricksters and the stories as literature, Living Sideways is the most thorough book to date on Native American tricksters.