Ebook: Rifled sanctuaries some views of the Pacific Islands in Western literature to 1900
Author: Pearson Bill
- Tags: American literature, American literature--History and criticism, English literature, English literature--History and criticism, French literature, French literature--History and criticism, Literature, Travel, Livres électroniques, Criticism interpretation etc, English literature -- History and criticism, American literature -- History and criticism, French literature -- History and criticism, Islands of the Pacific -- In literature, Islands of the Pacific -- Description and travel, Pacific Ocean -- Islands o
- Series: Macmillan Brown lectures 1982
- Year: 1984
- Publisher: Auckland University Press
- City: New York;Auckland;Islands of the Pacific;Oxford;Pacific Ocean
- Language: English
- epub
The Pacific Islands began to appear in Western literature soon after European navigators made landfall there. From the first, there was seldom a statement of plain facts. Explorers brought their own viewpoints while editors, poets and novelists went on to interpret and moralise the first accounts. Portraying Pacific peoples as sensual, indolent, childlike and – frequently – wicked, such stories implied the duty of Europeans to rule and of the natives to be grateful. Modified though it sometimes was by the more accepting attitudes of beachcombers, by the exploitative activities of traders, and throgh the romantic eyes of erotic novelists, this conception of Pacific Islanders persisted through the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.