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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 19th century
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Pacific Possessions - The Pursuit of Authenticity in Nineteenth-Century Oceanian Travel Accounts (Hardcover)
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Pacific Possessions - The Pursuit of Authenticity in Nineteenth-Century Oceanian Travel Accounts (Hardcover)
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Reframes Polynesia and Melanesia through analysis of
nineteenth-century travel writing In Pacific Possessions: The
Pursuit of Authenticity in Nineteenth-Century Oceanian Travel
Accounts, Chris J. Thomas expands the literary canon on Polynesia
and Melanesia beyond the giants, such as Herman Melville and Jack
London, to include travel narratives by British and American
visitors. These accounts were widely read and reviewed when they
first appeared but have largely been ignored by scholars. For the
first time, Thomas defines these writings as a significant literary
genre. Recovering these works allows us to reconceive of
nineteenth-century Oceania as a vibrant hub of cultural
interchange. Pacific Possessions recaptures the polyphony of voices
that enlivened this space through the writing of these travelers,
while also paying attention to their Oceanian interlocutors. Each
chapter centers on a Pacific cultural marker, what Thomas refers to
as each writer's 'possession' the Tongan tattoo, the Hawaiian hula,
the Fijian cannibal fork, and Robert Louis Stevenson's cache of
South Seas photographs. Thomas analyzes how westerners formed
narratives around these objects and what those objects meant within
nineteenth-century Oceanian cultures. He argues that the accounts
served to shape a version of Oceanian authenticity that persists
today. The profiled traveler-writers had complex experiences, at
times promoting exoticized exaggerations of so-called authentic
Polynesian and Melanesian cultures and at other times genuinely
engaging in cultural exchange. However, their views were ultimately
compromised by a western lens. In Thomas's words, 'the authenticity
is at once celebrated and written over.'
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