Whole Oceans Away

Description

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 IntroductionHerman 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.

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• Americas
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 20 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631010163
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

“W HOLE O CEANS A WAY ”
“WHOLE OCEANS AWAY”

MELVILLE AND THE PACIFIC
Edited by JillBarnum, Wyn Kelley, and Christopher Sten
T HE K ENT S TATE U NIVERSITY P RESS
K ENT , O HIO
© 2007 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
A LL R IGHTS R ESERVED
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2006038551
ISBN 978-0-87338-893-1
Manufactured in the United States of America
11   10   09   08   07         5   4   3   2   1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Whole oceans away: Melville and the Pacific / edited by Jill Barnum, Wyn Kelley, and Christopher Sten.
p. cm.
Based on papers presented at the Fourth International Melville Society Conference held in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii on June 3–7, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN -13: 978-0-87338-893-1 (alk. paper) ∞
ISBN -10: 0-87338-893-3 (alk. paper) ∞
1. Melville, Herman, 1819–1891—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Melville, Herman, 1819–1891—Travel—Oceania.
3. Authors, American—19th century—Biography.
4. Sea stories, American—History and criticism.
5. Oceania—Description and travel. 6. Oceania—In literature.
I. Barnum, Jill, date. II. Kelley, Wyn. III. Sten, Christopher, date. IV. Melville Society.
PS 2387. W 48 2007
813′.3—dc22
2006038551
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available
To the memory of Bryan Short (1942–2003) —valued Melville Society colleague and treasurer, eminent scholar, beloved friend.

“Y ES, THE WORLD’S A SHIP ON ITS PASSAGE OUT, AND NOT A VOYAGE COMPLETE .” —Moby-Dick
Working together on this project has proved an experience of great joy and great and unexpected sorrow. On October 3, 2006, just as this collection was going through the copyediting stage, our coeditor and friend Jill Barnum died after a long struggle with cancer. Jill was the organizer and driving force behind this project; she inspired, not just the two of us, her coeditors, but all of our contributors as well, by her example, her friendship, her shining presence. Like the two of us, Jill had wanted and expected to dedicate this volume to our former colleague and good friend, Bryan Short, who died late in 2003, just months after the Melville Conference in Lahaina, Hawai‘i, that provided the impetus for this collection of essays. It is our wish, now, to dedicate this volume as well to Jill Barnum, editor extraordinaire, friend without parallel.
Wyn Kelley and Christopher Sten
Contents
Acknowledgments
Hawaiian Diacriticals
List of Illustrations
Introduction
P ART I: P ACIFIC S UBJECTS
1. Typee: Melville’s “Contribution” to the Well-Being of Native Hawaiians
Monica A. Ka‘imipono Kaiwi
2. Fayaway and Her Sisters: Gender, Popular Literature, and Manifest Destiny in the Pacific, 1848–1860
Amy S. Greenberg
3. “Depraved and Vicious” / Urbane and Domestic: Herman Melville, Elizabeth Sanders, and Traditions of Figuring Hawaiians
Charlene Avallone
4. Sociolinguistic-Ethnohistorical Observations on Pidgin English in Typee and Omoo
Emanuel J. Drechsel
5. “He alo ā he alo”: Jonathan Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio at the Melville and the Pacific Conference
Paul Lyons
Dismembering Láhui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887
Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio
P ART II: C OLONIAL A PPROPRIATIONS AND R ESISTANCE
6. “A Work I Have Never Happened to Meet”: Melville’s Versions of Porter in Typee
John Bryant
7. Plagiarizing Polynesia: Decolonization in Melville’s Omoo Borrowings
Bryan Short
8. Mapping the Marquesas for
Typee Sanford E. Marovitz
9. Mapping Imagination and Experience in Melville’s Pacific Novels
Christopher N. Phillips
10. Rozoko in the Pacific: Melville’s Natural History of Creation
Wyn Kelley
P ART III: E MPIRE , R ACE, AND N ATION
11. Travels in the Interior: Typee, Pym , and the Limits of Transculturation
Susan Garbarini Fanning
12. “Duty and Profit Hand in Hand”: Melville, Whaling, and the Failure of Heroic Materialism
John T. Matteson
13. “Strike through the Unreasoning Masks”: Moby-Dick and Japan
Ikuno Saiki
14. “The Subordinate Phantoms”: Melville’s Conflicted Response to Asia in Moby-Dick
Elizabeth Schultz
15. “Facts Picked Up in the Pacific”: Fragmentation, Deformation, and the (Cultural) Uses of Enchantment in “The Encantadas”
Christopher Sten
16. Of Mimicry and Masques: Benito Cereno and the National Allegory
Kevin Goddard
P ART IV: P OSTCOLONIAL R EFLECTIONS
17. Poem as Palm: Polynesia and Melville’s Turn to Poetry
Warren Rosenberg
18. Tribal Queequeg and Daniel Quinn: Glimpsing Melville’s “Undiscovered Prime”
Jill Barnum and Robert Del Tredici
19. Taking the Polynesians to Heart: Melville’s Typee and Merwin’s The Folding Cliffs
Wendy Stallard Flory
20. Marquesan Survivals: Melville and the Sacrifice of Reality Television
Tony McGowan
21. Lines of Dissent: Oceanic Tattoo and the Colonial Contest
Stanley Orr, Matt Rollins, and Martin Kevorkian
22. Moby-Dick and the War on Terror
Carolyn L. Karcher
Contributors
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments

L AUNCHING “upon the deep” of this volume, with “its unshored, harborless immensities,” would not have been possible without contributions from multiple sources. Our academic institutions head the list. At the General College, University of Minnesota, this project spanned the service of two deans, David Taylor and Terry Collins, and two Academic Affairs directors, Terry Collins and Dan Detzner, who generously provided a graduate research assistant, travel funding, secretarial assistance, and mailing. Our graduate research assistant Jill Flynn was indispensable in filing, assembling, editing, typing, and helping us brainstorm various stages of the project. The Literature Section of MIT and the Department of English and the Dean’s Office, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University, provided invaluable support for travel, permissions, supplies, and mailing. We were gratified by the enthusiastic acceptance of our book proposal by Joanna Hildebrand Craig, Editor-in-Chief at the Kent State University Press. She and her staff were quick to respond to every query and guided us expertly throughout the process.
We owe the birth of the project to Charlene Avallone and Carolyn Karcher, co-chairs of the fourth International Melville Society Conference, Melville and the Pacific, in Lahaina, Maui, where each of these essays first came to light. To Chip Hughes, mahalo for your support, cheer, and friendship. Pawel Jedrzejko and Timothy Marr helped us strategize the project in important ways in Lahaina. Jan Sten and Bryan Short worked on the spot to pull the conference papers together and to conceive of them collectively. Beyond Maui’s shores, our Melville Society colleagues and friends Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, Elizabeth Schultz, and Robert K. Wallace provided inspiration, insight, and support in equal measure as we conceptualized the volume. Robert Del Tredici graciously allowed us to use his lambent artwork in the volume; he also took our group portrait for the dust jacket. From first to last, the “emblazoned … fraternity” among the three editors made possible the energy, excitement, and joy that marked the entire enterprise.
Topmost thanks to our contributors, whose essays are the muscle and sinews of this volume. Warm appreciation to John Bryant and Charlene Avallone, who gave us important and timely advice along the way.
To our families and familiars, thank you for bathing us in “eternal mildness of joy” and for being our “solid … crescentic centre” at all times: Benjamin and Nicholas Gidmark, Bob Del Tredici; Britt, Bayne, and Dale Peterson; Caroline, Elizabeth, and Jan Sten.
Hawaiian Diacriticals

Kahako (also known as mekona or macron): horizontal line over vowel ( ā ); indicates that the vowel sound is to be elongated.
okina: inverted apostrophe before vowel (‘); indicates a glottal stop or break in breath.
Note: The spellings of certain words—Hawai‘i / Hawaii, Nuku Hiva / Nukuhiva, Taipi / Typee—vary from chapter to chapter according to the authors’ preferences and sources.
List of Illustrations
Figure 1   Ka‘ahumanu, the kuhina nui and royal consort of Kamehameha I Figure 2   Kau‘ikeaouli (Kamehameha III), with royal consort Figure 3   Mataio Kekuanao‘a, governor of O‘ahu, with daughter Figure 4   Dr. P. Gerrit Judd with heirs to the throne Figure 5   Map of the Marquesas from Typee , first British edition Figure 6   Outline map of the Marquesas from the Office of Strategic Services Figure 7   Map of the Marquesas purchased from Sotheby’s Figure 8   Close-up of Sotheby’s map Figure 9   Legend from the Sotheby’s map Figure 10   Close-up of “South west Pacific” map Figure 11   Halley’s 1705 Map of the World Figure 12   Frontispiece to volume 2 of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe Figure 13   Frontispiece from the first edition of Omoo Figure 14   Edward Tyson’s chimpanzee with walking stick, from his Orang-Outang (1699) Figure 15   “Queequeg and His Mark”
Introduction

I N the world that in Moby-Dick Melville located “whole oceans away” (“The Symphony”), Captain James Cook (1728–1779) arrived at Hawai‘i in 1778, giving it a new name—the Sandwich Islands—and making his own name famous and infamous when he died there shortly thereafter in a violent conflict with islanders. More than sixty years later, after signing on a whaling vessel, the Acushnet , in 1841, Melville jumped ship in the Marquesas and lived among the Taipi for a month in 1842; he then signed on the Lucy Ann , mutinied in Tahiti, and was put ashore for incarceration, from which he escaped and embarked on a period of beachcombing; joining the Charles and Henry , he sailed to Hawai‘i, where he worked at different jobs until August 1843, when he enlisted in the United States Navy and sailed home on the United States , arriving in October of 1844.
As Charlene Avallone reminds us in her essay in this volume, Melville spent the longest portion of hi