The South Seas : a reception history from Daniel Defoe to Dorothy Lamour / Sean Brawley and Chris Dixon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brawley, Sean, 1966- author.

Dixon, Chris, 1960- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Oceania--In literature.

Oceania.

Oceania--In art.

Oceania--History.

History.

Oceania--In motion pictures.

Oceania Region.

Physical Description:

xvii, 301 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2015]

Summary:

The South Seas: A Reception History from Daniel Defoe to Dorothy Lamour charts the idea of the South Seas in popular cultural productions of the English-speaking world, from the beginnings of the Western enterprise in the Pacific until the eve of the Pacific War. Building on the notion that the influences on the creation of a text, and the ways in which its audience receives the text, are essential for understanding the historical significance of particular productions, Sean Brawley and Chris Dixon explore the ways in which authors' and producers' ideas about the South Seas were "haunted" by others who had written on the subject, and how they in turn influenced future generations of knowledge producers. The South Seas is unique in its examination of an array of cultural texts. Along with the foundational literary texts that established and perpetuated the South Seas tradition in written form, the authors explore diverse cultural forms such as art, music, theater, film, fairs, platform speakers, surfing culture, and tourism. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Beginnings: Defoe, Dampier, and Discovery 1

2 America's South Seas 11

3 Herman Melville's Pacific Imaginings 25

4 San Francisco, Art, and Robert Louis Stevenson 43

5 Finding New Guinea 59

6 The Colonial Endeavor and Australia's South Seas 75

7 The Fair, the Stage, and the Song 91

8 The Great War and the Lost Generation 115

9 A South Seas Education: Platform Speakers, National Geographic, and Margaret Mead 135

10 South Seas Tourism 157

11 Hollywood Encounters the South Seas 171

12 Cinematic Escapes: The South Seas Adventure Film 193

13 HMAV Bounty and the Great Depression 215

14 Pardon My Sarong: The Arrival of Dorothy Lamour 237.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739193358

073919335X

OCLC:

900180165