Memory and Storytelling in Selected Works of Joy Harjo

• Thesis title in Czech: Paměť a vyprávění ve vybraných dílech Joy Harjo
• Thesis title in English: Memory and Storytelling in Selected Works of Joy Harjo
• Key words: paměť|vzpomínání|vyprávění|Joy Harjo|literatura amerických indiánů|současné spisovatelky|poezie
• English key words: memory|remembrance|storytelling|Joy Harjo|Native American literature|contemporary women writers|poetry
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2020/2021
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 04.12.2020
• Date of assignment: 07.12.2020
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 05.01.2021
• Date and time of defence: 06.09.2022 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 08.08.2022
• Date of proceeded defence: 06.09.2022
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. Klára Kolinská, Dr., Ph.D.

Guidelines

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the poetry of the Native American poet Joy Harjo as a source of power to commemorate and preserve what should not be forgotten – people and their stories, their struggles, the oppression they have gone through. The thesis focuses on the themes of memory and storytelling and how they manifest in the content and the formal features of Harjo’s poems from the 1980s and 1990s poetry collections She Had Some Horses, In Mad Love and War, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, and A Map to the Next World. By revisiting old tales or imagining new ones, Harjo uses poetry to keep the memory of the past alive while bringing forward the stories of the contemporary lives of Native Americans, especially women. Memory and storytelling influence the formal features of Harjo’s poems as well, whether that means using elements of the oral tradition or, for example, writing prose poems. The analysis also considers the broader context of Native American attitudes towards the importance of memory and storytelling as means of survival and perseverance, which anticipate the striving of Harjo’s poetry.

References

Primary Sources:
Harjo, Joy. A Map to the Next World. New York: W.W. & Norton, 2001.
Harjo, Joy. In Mad Love and War. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1990.
Harjo, Joy. She Had Some Horses. New York: W.W. & Norton, 2008.
Harjo, Joy. The Woman Who Fell from the Sky. New York: W.W. & Norton, 1996.

Secondary Sources:
Ballenger, Bruce. “Methods of Memory: On Native American Storytelling.” College English 59.7 (1997): 789-800.
Coltelli, Laura, and Joy Harjo. The Spiral of Memory: Interviews (Poets on Poetry). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Fast, Robin Riley. The Heart as a Drum: Continuance and Resistance in American Indian Poetry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.
Kolosov, Jacqueline. “Poetries of Transformation: Joy Harjo and Li-Young Lee.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 15.2 (2003): 39-57.
Lang, Nancy. “‘Twin Gods Bending over’: Joy Harjo and Poetic Memory.” MELUS 18.3 (1993): 41-49.
Leen, Mary, and Joy Harjo. “An Art of Saying: Joy Harjo’s Poetry and the Survival of Storytelling.” American Indian Quarterly 19.1 (1995): 1-16.
Porter, Joy, and Kenneth M. Roemer, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Watts, Tracey. “Haunted Memories: Disruptive Ghosts in the Poems of Brenda Marie Osbey and Joy Harjo.” The Southern Literary Journal 46.2 (2014): 108-127.