Les sauvages américains

Algonquin and Iroquois natives of the American Northeast were described in great detail by colonial explorers who ventured into the region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with the writings of John Smith and Samuel de Champlain, Gordon Sayre analyzes French and English accounts of Native Americans to reveal the rhetorical codes by which their cultures were represented and the influence that these images of Indians had on colonial and modern American society. By emphasizing the work of Pierre Francois-Xavier Charlevoix, Joseph-Francois Lafitau, and Baron de Lahontan, among others, Sayre highlights the important contribution that French explorers and ethnographers made to colonial literature.

First sentence: Thoreau often wished to create the impression that he spent more time in the woods than in the library, and perhaps it is because the opposite was true that he characterizes these obscure works as a forest, a surrogate wilderness.

Year

1997

Language

English

Publisher

The University of North Carolina Press

Editions

1

Pages

336

ISBN

9780807846520

Data source: Wikidata