Durham E-Theses Remembering to Forget: Native American Presences and the U.S. National Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Euro-American Fiction MCDONNELL, ALEX,JAMES How to cite: MCDONNELL, ALEX,JAMES (2016) Remembering to Forget: Native American Presences and the U.S. National Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Euro-American Fiction , Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11849/ Use policy This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 (CC0) Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail:
[email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 1 Alexander James McDonnell Remembering to Forget: Native American Presences and the U.S. National Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Euro-American Fiction. Abstract This thesis interrogates the part played by the figure of ‘the Indian’ in the formation of the U.S. national consciousness as reflected in the nineteenth-century fictional works of James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Montgomery Bird, Lydia Maria Child, Helen Hunt Jackson and Herman Melville. I propose that new understandings can be reached concerning Indian representations and national identity in the selected texts via an approach that combines postcolonial and psychoanalytic theories, in particular as detailed by Ranjana Khanna in Dark Continents (2003). I explore how the national ideals articulated by Cooper, Bird, Child and Jackson are predicated on repression identifiable in historical revisionism, disavowal, ideological rhetoric, generic conventions and so forth, which reflects a melancholic nationalism more generally concerning the colonial subjugation of Native Americans.