Defamiliarization in Mari Sandoz's Cheyenne Autumn

"...One may consider Cheyenne Autumn primarily as literary discourse, in which defamiliarization plays a crucial stylistic role. In applying this technique, familiar language structures that are taken for granted, and hence automatically perceived, become disturbed to the point of oddness and estrangement. ...By deftly appropriating fragments of Cheyenne culture from the ethnographic literature, Sandoz compels the reader to a hightened awareness of artistic process" -Dr. Guillermo Bartelt