Reviewed by:

• Resurrecting the First Great American Play: Imperial Politics
  and Colonial Ambitions in Frontier Detroit by Sämi Ludwig
• Joshua David Bellin (bio)

In Resurrecting the First Great American Play, Sämi Ludwig sets out to demonstrate that Robert Rogers's 1766 frontier melodrama Ponteach: or, The Savages of America, generally treated by scholars as a middling work of only antiquarian value in the history of the early American drama, is not only of significant "ideological interest" but also the equal of "the best stage entertainment in English at that time" (4). To substantiate these claims, Ludwig offers to "analyze the cultural work" of Ponteach "in a historical context, mainly by means of honestly positioning myself with my limitations as an author of the twenty-first century while at the same time trying to understand the complex and distant reality of the eighteenth century" (5–6). Ludwig's passion for Rogers's work is palpable, and his humility laudable. At the same time, certain scholarly oversights and problematic assumptions weaken his case for the play's historical (and particularly intercultural) significance.

The book is divided into two sections. The first outlines the life stories of Pontiac and Rogers, as well as the historical backdrop of the play; the second examines the literary qualities and significance of Rogers's work. The biographical material of the first section is generally engaging, though the first two chapters are needlessly padded with catalogs of every nonfictional and fictional representation of the two men's lives the author could find—from historical accounts to novelizations to children's books to films to toy soldiers (23–29, 57–63). Though interesting enough from a bibliophile's point of view, it's not clear how this information is helpful or germane to those seeking a new understanding of Rogers's play.

More problematically from a theoretical standpoint, Ludwig tends to trust without question his historical sources' depictions of Native American peoples, as when he writes that Howard Peckham's Pontiac and the Indian Uprising (1947) is "a gold mine of cultural and historical information on the great chief's upbringing" (19). Given how little we know about Pontiac's life—not to mention Peckham's proclivity for referring to Pontiac and his people as "savages"—I find myself questioning the value of the gold [End Page 277] in this particular mine, whether for historical or literary analysis. This is a problem with many books about Indigenous persons and people: relying almost entirely on Euro-American sources, they are all too quick to make sweeping pronouncements about what Indians said, did, believed, desired, and were.

Given Ludwig's claims about the intercultural significance of Rogers's play, one might have expected him to make a sustained effort to avoid or, at least, to theorize this problem. Invoking Bakhtinian dialogism in his introduction (10), Ludwig contends that the "disharmonies in [Rogers's] play" (10) derive not from the playwright's inexperience but from "the situation of the very territory that our story describes. The Northwest was a contested area of extreme social and cultural hybridity, where traditions were constantly being negotiated and reinvented" (65). As his authority for this claim, Ludwig puts forward Richard White's influential The Middle Ground (1991), which he relies on extensively in his third chapter. But while White's thesis offers an enduring framework for understanding eighteenth-century Indian-European relationships, Ludwig's use of this framework is at once inadequately grounded in existing scholarship and, likely as a consequence, inconsistent in its conceptualization of the "middle ground."

In order to situate Ponteach in a space of "cultural hybridity," Ludwig argues that the play constitutes a reliable archive of "ethnographic information" (120) about eighteenth-century Indigenous lifeways as they came into conflict with their European counterparts. Yet this argument is based on the scantiest of evidence, consisting entirely of a few references in Rogers's play to such things as Indian gift-giving (120), oratory (121), scalping (122), and ransoming of hostages (123). One is left to wonder...

审核人：

• 复活第一部伟大的美国戏剧：
  萨米·路德维希（SämiLudwig）在底特律的帝国政治和殖民野心
• 约书亚（Joshua David Bellin）（生物）

在《复活第一部伟大的美国戏剧》中，萨米·路德维希（SämiLudwig）着手证明罗伯特·罗杰斯（Robert Rogers）1766年的边境情节剧《蓬塔奇》：或者说，《野蛮人》（A Savages of America）通常被学者们视为美国早期戏剧历史上仅具有古董价值的中间作品，不仅具有重大的“意识形态兴趣”，而且与“当时英语中最好的舞台娱乐”相等（4）。为了证实这些主张，路德维希提出“分析庞特奇的文化工作”“在历史背景下，主要是通过诚实地限制自己成为二十一世纪作家的方式，同时试图理解十八世纪的复杂而遥远的现实”（5-6）。路德维希对罗杰斯作品的热情显而易见，他的谦逊值得称赞。同时，某些学术上的疏忽和有问题的假设削弱了他对戏剧的历史意义（尤其是跨文化​​意义）的论据。

这本书分为两个部分。第一部分概述了庞蒂亚克和罗杰斯的生活故事，以及该剧的历史背景；第二部分概述了庞蒂亚克和罗杰斯的生平。第二部分考察了罗杰斯作品的文学品质和意义。第一部分的传记材料通常很吸引人，尽管前两章不必要地填充了作者可以找到的关于这两个男人生活的每一个虚构和虚构描述的目录，从历史记录到小说，儿童读物，电影到玩具士兵。 （23–29，57–63）。尽管从书友的角度来看足够有趣，但尚不清楚这些信息对那些寻求对罗杰斯的戏剧有新认识的人如何有所帮助或紧密联系。

从理论的角度来看，更成问题的是，路德维希倾向于毫无疑问地相信他的历史资料对美国原住民的描述，就像他写的那样，霍华德·佩克汉姆的《庞蒂亚克和印度起义》（1947年）是“关于美国文化和历史信息的金矿”。大酋长的成长”（19）。鉴于我们对庞蒂亚克的一生一无所知-更不用说佩克汉姆（Peckham）将庞蒂亚克和他的人民称为“野蛮人”的倾向了-我发现自己对黄金的价值提出了质疑[完277页]在这个特定的矿山中，无论是用于历史分析还是文学分析。这是许多有关土著人民的书籍的问题：几乎完全依靠欧美人的资料，他们太快了，无法就印第安人的所作所为，言论，信仰，期望和过去发表全面的声明。

鉴于路德维希（Ludwig）对罗杰斯（Rogers）的戏剧具有跨文化意义的主张，人们可能希望他会做出持续的努力，以避免或至少从理论上解决这一问题。路德维希在导言中引用了巴赫金主义的对话（10），认为“罗杰斯戏剧中的不和谐”（10）并非源于剧作家的经验不足，而是源于“我们故事所描述的那片领土的状况。西北地区是有争议的社会和文化极端融合的地区，传统在不断地被谈判和重新发明”（65）。作为此主张的权威，路德维希提出了理查德·怀特（Richard White）有影响力的《中间立场》（The Middle Ground）（1991），他在第三章中广泛依赖该书。但是，尽管怀特的论文为理解18世纪的印欧关系提供了一个持久的框架，但路德维希对这一框架的使用却立足于现有的学术基础，因此，其在“中间立场”的概念化也可能不一致。

为了将蓬泰奇置于“文化融合”的空间中，路德维格认为，该剧本构成了关于“民族志信息”（120）的可靠档案，有关该民族志的信息与十八世纪的欧洲人的生活习惯发生了冲突。然而，这种论点是基于证据很少的，完全由罗杰斯的戏剧中的一些引用所提及，例如印度的送礼（120），演说（121），剥头皮（122）和人质赎金（123）。一个人想知道...