Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative: An Appropriation to the Public Sphere

• 발행기관: 영상영어교육학회
• 저자명: Jong Jin Noh
• 간행물 정보: 『STEM Journal』2권 2호, 163~182쪽, 전체 19쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2001.12.30

영문 초록

The captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson is a literary work that had drawn tremendous curiosity and interest both in New England and England at the time. Because of the wars against Indians in the course of pioneering a new land, this narrative became the most well known captivity narrative in its own genre. However, given the circumstances, it proves to be less an autobiographical narrative that reflected on a personal experience than a tract that was used as a tool for reinforcing the colonial ideology of the dominant class in the blossoming colony. Comparing the situation of the biblical figures with that of herself, namely appropriating a form of typology, Mary Rowlandson presents a rhetorical strategy that her personal experience becomes a collective one by emphasizing the history of Jews under the slavery in Egypt and God's grace to guide them to a land of freedom. Therefore, the narrative plays a role in teaching her people how to live in a new world by emphasizing the importance of God's grace and plan. Yet her rhetorical strategy is closely related to the goal of disseminating the religious and political ideology of the dominant class. The very similar structural frame of the tracts concerning Cotton Mather, one of the powerful religious and political leaders at the time, proves this point. In this context, this narrative can be regarded as an example of old propaganda literature. The focus of this paper is to see how an issue in the personal realm is expanded to one of the public sphere for ideological purposes. It pursues Rowlandson's rendering of a personal story that is extended to a collective issue of mutual experience by making the readers vicariously experience her own.

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