"Whole oceans away" : Melville and the Pacific / edited by Jill Barnum, Wyn Kelley, and Christopher Sten.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Barnum, Jill, 1947-2006, editor.

Kelley, Wyn, editor.

Sten, Christopher, 1944- editor.

Melville Society.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authors, American--19th century--Biography.

Authors, American.

Sea stories, American--History and criticism.

Sea stories, American.

Oceania--Description and travel.

Oceania.

Oceania--In literature.

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891--Criticism and interpretation.

Melville, Herman.

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891--Travel--Oceania.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (373 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Kent, Ohio : The Kent State University Press, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Essays on Melville and the culture of the Pacific "Like the young Melville, those who imagine Polynesia from the perspective of Europe or North America tend to envision a tropical garden set in a shining sea. But the Pacific experienced by a runaway American sailor in an earlier century presents a different picture, and the Pacifi c experienced by indigenous peoples of today a different one yet." - from the Introduction Herman Melville had a lifelong fascination with the Pacific and with the diverse island cultures that dotted this vast ocean. The essays in this collection articulate the intersection of Western and Pacific perspectives in Melville's work, from his early writings based on ocean voyages and encounters in the Pacific to Western modes of thought in relation to race and national identity. These essays interrogate familiar themes of Western colonialism while introducing fresh insights, including Melville's use of Pacific cartography, the art of tattooing, and his interest in evolutionary science. Using a variety of methodologies and approaches-postcolonial theory, cultural studies, linguistics, performance theory- "Whole Oceans Away" offers a valuable body of criticism for students of nineteenth-century American literature and history, cultural studies, and Pacific Rim studies.

Contents:

Cover

Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgments

Hawaiian Diacriticals

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Part I: Pacific Subjects

Chapter one: Typee: Melville's Contribution to the Well-Being of Native Hawaiians

Chapter Two: Fayaway and Her Sisters: Gender, Popular Literature, and Manifest Destiny in the Pacific, 1848-1860

Chapter Three: Depraved and Vicious / Urbane and Domestic: Herman Melville, Elizabeth Sanders, and Traditions of Figuring Hawaiians

Chapter Four: Sociolinguistic-Ethnohistorical Observations on Pidgin English in Typee and Omoo

Chapter Five: He alo ahe alo: Jonathan Kamakawiwo'ole Osorio at the Melville and the Pacific Conference

Dismembering Lahui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887

Part II: Colonial Appropriations and Resistance

Chapter Six: A work I Have Never Happened to Meet

Melville's versions of Porter in Typee

Chapter Seven: Plagiarizing Polynesia: Decolonization in Melville's Omoo Borrowings

Chapter Eight: Mapping the Marquesas for Typee

Chapter Nine: Mapping Imagination and Experience in Melville's Pacific Novels

Chapter Ten: Rozoko in the Pacific: Melville's Natural History of Creation

Part III: Empire, Race, and Nation

Chapter Eleven: Travels in the Interior: Typee, Pym, and the Limits of Transculturation

Chapter Twelve: Duty and Profit Hand in Hand: Melville, Whaling, and the Failure of Heroic Materialism

Chapter Thirteen: Strike through the Unreasoning Masks: Moby-Dick and Japan

Chapter Fourteen: The Subordinate Phantoms: Melville's Conflicted Response to Asia in Moby-Dick

Chapter Fifteen: Facts Picked Up in the Pacific: Fragmentation, Deformation, and the (Cultural) Uses of Enchantment in The Encantadas

Chapter Sixteen: Of Mimicry and Masques: Benito Cereno and the National Allegory

Part IV: Postcolonial Reflections

Chapter Seventeen: Poem as Palm: Polynesia and Melville's Turn to Poetry

Chapter Eighteen: Tribal Queequeg and Daniel Quinn: Glimpsing Melville's Undiscovered Prime

Chapter Nineteen: Taking the Polynesians to Heart: Melville's Typee and Merwin's The Folding Cliffs

Chapter Twenty: Marquesan Survivals: Melville and the Sacrifice of Reality Television

Chapter Twenty-One: Lines of Dissent: Oceanic Tattoo and the Colonial Contest

Chapter Twenty-Two: Moby-Dick and the War on Terror

Contributors

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Based on papers presented at the Fourth International Melville Society Conference held in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii on June 3-7, 2003.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781631010170

1631010174

9781631010163

1631010166

OCLC:

922995474