N. Scott Momaday Summary

N. Scott Momaday (born 1934) is recognized as one of the premier writers in the United States. In 1969, his novel House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer prize for fiction.One of the most distingu... Read more

N. Scott Momaday is the dean of American Indian authors. (Indians, especially in Oklahoma and the Southwest, use the term Indian. Academics are the ones who chiefly use Native American.) Momaday's nov... Read more

In 1969, the same year that N. Scott Momaday began his tenure as associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, he won the Pulitzer Prize for fi... Read more

In the following review, Finlay offers a stylistic and thematic description of Angle of Geese, praising the volume as Momaday's best work. N. Scott Momaday's reputation, before Angle ... Read more

In the following essay, Mason provides an in-depth analysis of The Gourd Dancer, examining the major themes of each section and the volume as a whole. N. Scott Momaday's first full-length co... Read more

In the essay below, Velie provides background information on Momaday' s life and career and discusses how Yvor Winters and Frederick Goddard Tuckerman influenced his early poetry. Velie conclud... Read more

Below, Anderson provides a thematic and stylistic review of In the Presence of the Sun. There have been a number of notable collected and selected volumes of poetry over the past few years, includi... Read more

In the piece reprinted below, McAllister provides a mixed review of The Names, questioning, in particular, Momaday's advocacy of self-imagining as a means of establishing Native identity. Sc... Read more

An American critic, essayist, novelist, and editor, Larson is the author of American Indian Fiction (1978). In the following excerpt from a review of The Ancient Child, he praises Momaday's &#x... Read more

In the essay below, Meredith discusses Momaday's literary attempts to preserve Native American culture and examines his use of Kiowa traditions as a narrative form and "a measured angle ... Read more

Here, Anderson provides a thematic and stylistic review of In the Presence of the Sun. There have been a number of notable collected and selected volumes of poetry over the past few years, includin... Read more

In the following review, Finlay offers a stylistic and thematic description of Angle of Geese, praising the volume as Momaday's best work. N. Scott Momaday's reputation, before Angle ... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles A. Nicholas As a modern, historical consciousness and a member of a largely desacralized society, [Momaday] knows that he cannot return to the mythopoesis and archaic ontolo... Read more

Critical Essay by Wallace Stegner "The Names" is an Indian book, but not a book about wrongs done to Indians. It is a search and a celebration, a book of identities and sources. Momaday... Read more

Critical Essay by P. Ward [In The Gourd Dancer Momaday] achieves a memorable evocation of indigenous rhythms and emotion in a numer of poems, while turning Janus-faced in a second style to the Anglo-... Read more