Spaces of the Mind

Elaine A. Jahner (1942–2003) was a professor of English at Dartmouth College. She is the coeditor of Lakota Myth and Lakota Belief and Ritual, by James R. Walker, both available in Bison Books editions.

"Spaces of the Mind pioneers a theory and a methodology that could prove very useful in the analysis of narrative in general and Native American oral narrative in particular provided that those who use the book realize the problem of data collection and are careful to document and situate their own data for research applications."—Studies in American Indian Literatures "Scholars of rhetoric and language, spatial theory, and social identity should find value in [this] attempt to explore cultural continuity through the structure of narrative."—John Herron, Western Historical Quarterly "Storytelling as survival is at the core of Elaine A. Jahner's sophisticated Spaces of the Mind: Narrative and Community in the American West. . . . Her claim that narrative is the key to the way in which reality is—literally—socially constructed, seems relevant to the questions and aims of other westernists. Moreover, her focus on stories told by the putative historical losers rather than the winners accords with the New Western emphasis on nonheroic western narrative. . . .  Approaching [James] Welch and [Mildred] Walker with the idea that stories are not only about, but are themselves agents of survival, she finds that both the novelists import storytelling styles and motifs from the repertory of the communities represented."—Nina Baym, American Literary History "[Jahner] has threaded together the insights of half a dozen disciplines to reveal the ways in which narratives encode the most fundamental meanings of individuality and community and what narratives can tell us about humanity writ large."—Raymond J. DeMallie, author of The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt "[Jahner's] critical discussion of the Welch novels benefits from her knowledge of Native American myth and reaches the level of exquisite analysis, offering proof of her method and a model for the analysis of narrative literature invoking cultural continuity. She was a gifted writer and a master/mistress of the postmodern sentence." —Beverly Stoeltje, Journal of Folklore Research