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Book

Title Islands in history and representation / edited by Rod Edmond and Vanessa Smith
Published London : New York : Routledge, 2003

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  909.0942 Edm/Iih  AVAILABLE
 W'PONDS  909.0942 Edm/Iih  AVAILABLE
Description xii, 234 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Series Routledge research in postcolonial literatures ; 6
Routledge research in postcolonial literatures ; 6
Contents 1. Taking history offshore: Atlantic islands in European minds, 1400-1800 / John R. Gillis -- 2. Island bounds / Gillian Beer -- 3. 'The cane-land isles': commerce and empire in late eighteenth-century georgic and pastoral poetry / Markman Ellis -- 4. Bulama and Sierra Leone: utopian islands and visionary interiors / Deirdre Coleman -- 5. Pacific island encounters and the German invention of race / Vanessa Agnew -- 6. Cook in Tonga: terms of trade / Harriet Guest -- 7. Pitcairn's 'guilty stock': the island as breeding ground / Vanessa Smith -- 8. Abject bodies/abject sites: leper islands in the high imperial era / Rod Edmond -- 9. Derek Walcott's Omeros: representing St. Lucia, re-presenting Homer / Roger Moss -- 10. The island of wandering souls: processes of creolisation, politics of emancipation and the problematic of absence on Reunion Island / Francoise Verges -- 11. God save the Falklands: postcolonial geographies of the Falklands/Malvinas / Klaus Dodds
Summary "This collection of essays explores the ways in which islands have been used, imagined and theorised, both by island dwellers and continentals. This study considers how island dwellers of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans conceived of themselves and their relations to proximate mainlands, and examines the particular fascination that islands have long held in the European imagination." "Early essays in the collection address the significance of islands in the Atlantic economy of the eighteenth century. The focus then shifts to the exploration of the Pacific, which presented Europe with new island-groups to explore, exploit, and imagine. Islands were often seen as natural colonies or settings for ideal communities, but they were also used as dumping grounds for the unwanted, a practice which has continued into the twentieth century and remains evident in recent policy towards refugees. The later essays look at the important role played by islands in the process of decolonisation and at island-oriented developments in postcolonial writing. The collection argues the need for an island-based theory within postcolonial studies and suggests how this might be constructed. Covering a historical span from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the contributors include literary and postcolonial critics, historians and geographers."--BOOK JACKET
Analysis islands
Notes "This book originates from a conference that the editors co-convened at the University of Kent in 1999."--Acknowledgements
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [207]-223) and index
Subject Islands in literature.
Colonies -- History.
Decolonization -- History.
Postcolonialism -- History.
Islands -- History.
SUBJECT Islands of the Atlantic http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85068609 -- History. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh99005024
Islands of the Indian Ocean http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85068611 -- History. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh99005024
Islands of the Pacific http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85068616 -- History. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh99005024
Genre/Form Essays.
Author Smith, Vanessa.
Edmond, Rod.
LC no. 2002045451
ISBN 0415286662 hardback alkaline paper