Literary Culture and the Pacific: Nineteenth-Century Textual Encounters (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture) [Hardcover]

Vanessa Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0521573599 | ISBN-13: 978-0521573597

This book examines a range of nineteenth-century European accounts from the Pacific that depict Polynesian responses to imported metropolitan culture, in particular its technologies of writing and print and how they were appropriated and interrogated by Pacific peoples. Examining accounts by beachcombers and missionaries, and offering a detailed discussion of the late Pacific writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vanessa Smith argues that the texts of contact and settlement are shaped at least as much by local contexts as by the agendas of their European authors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...Smith (King's College, Cambridge) has written an interesting analysis of European accounts of early contact with Pacific islanders." Choice

"The book is an innovative and useful addition to the presently flourishing critical field of colonial and post/ neocolonial studies...Literary Culture and the Pacific offers a wealth of specific interpretive moments...excellent insights...an excellent bibliography...an original and valuable book." Modern Philology

Book Description

This book examines a range of nineteenth-century European accounts from the Pacific, depicting Polynesian responses to imported metropolitan culture, in particular its technologies of writing and print and how they were appropriated and interrogated by Pacific peoples. Examining accounts by beachcombers and missionaries, and offering a detailed discussion of the late Pacific writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vanessa Smith argues that the texts of contact and settlement are shaped at least as much by local contexts as by the agendas of their European authors.0

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521573599
• ISBN-13: 978-0521573597
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,939,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid study of power shifts in textualizing Pacific, December 14, 2003

By 

Rob Wilson (Santa Cruz and Honolulu) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Literary Culture and the Pacific: Nineteenth-Century Textual Encounters (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture) (Hardcover)

This is a splendid study of power shifts, ruses, mimicry, contamination, counter-authority, in the textualizing Pacific seen as a domain of conversion and imperial materiality. The book deserves a wider recognition within postcolonial studies, as a thick descriptive theorization of colonial authority as made and unmade in a nexus of unequal and unstable distribution, then and now. The materials on Stevenson in Samoa are the best of their kind on native and colonial collaboration in something mongrel and new.