Davis, Natalie Zemon. Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds. New York: Hill & Wang, 2006. One of the most famous Shakespearean plays is Othello, but few people today are aware of the figure who inspired the central character or how any early European modern authors gained knowledge of the Muslim world.[footnoteRef:1] In her book Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds. Natalie Zemon Davis chronicles the life of Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati (also known as Ioannes Leo Africanus), who wrote a series of volumes designed to introduce the Christian reader to the Muslim way of life. His works were to become seminal texts in defining how Europeans saw the Muslim world as well as Jews and Semitic persons deemed to be 'other.' The author was a Muslim who converted to Christianity after being captured and enslaved and wrote his text under the auspices of Pope Leo X, who was fascinated by Semitic languages and Muslim customs, partially because he had a desire to make his mark converting these peoples.[footnoteRef:2] [1: Eleazar Gutwirth, review of Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds. The Journal...
2 (April 2007), p. 310.] [2: Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds. (New York: Hill & Wang, 2006), p.65.]
Tracks Louise Erdich What are the strategies that Erdrich uses to pull the reader quickly into her story? Louise Erdrich pulls the reader into her novel Tracks by using two strong narrators, Nanapush and Pauline Puyat, who are hostile to each other and represent opposed points-of-view, although neither is exactly 100% honest. The story opens during the tuberculosis epidemic of 1912, which "must have cleared all of the Anishinabe (Ojibwa) that the
Native Mythology to North America The Native American Mythologies are myths of lessons that every man can apply in his daily life. Many have misconceptions that Native American mythologies are just stories that are capable of entertaining the listeners. Once a person heard of a Native American myth, he can conclude that they are not just simply stories. Instead, they are able to serve us guidance and inspiration, brought by
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Rather than allowing the scene to solidify a stereotype, the author of this book proposes that readers should, assuming they are understand the true voice of the novel Huck Finn, allow the scene to alter the stereotype of Jim as a servant to the Caucasian man. Readers should, according to the author, instead see that Jim, as a free man, acts no differently not because he is bound to
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