Images of the Indian in four New World literatures

This study deals with the development of different 19th and 20th century views of the Western-Hemisphere "Indian". Pays special attention is paid to Brazilian, Peruvian, French, and English Canadian literatures, and the genre of the novel as well as the historical background of these myths. It includes a discussion of what a literary myth is, how it may be derived from a series of microtexts, and how these texts may be compared by the creation of tables detailing semiotically certain semantic attributes of the native New-World inhabitant.