Island Paradise The Myth

A colonial discourse has perpetuated the literary notion of islands as paradisal. This study explores how the notions of island paradise have been represented in European literature, the oral and literary indigenous traditions of the Caribbean and Sri Lanka, a colonial literary influence in these islands, and the literary experience after independence in these nations. Persistent themes of colonial narratives foreground the aesthetic and ignore the workforce in a representation of island space as idealized, insular, and vulnerable to conquest; an ideal space for management and control. English landscape has been replicated in islands through literature and in reality – the ‘Great House’ being an ideological symbol of power. Island Paradise: The Myth investigates how these entrenched notions of paradise, which islands have traditionally represented metonymically, are contested in the works of four postcolonial authors: Jamaica Kincaid, Lawrence Scott, Romesh Gunesekera, and Jean Arasanayagam, from the island nations of the Caribbean and Sri Lanka. It analyzes texts which focus on gardens, island space, and houses to examine how these motifs are used to re-vision colonial/contested sites. This book examines the relationship between landscape and identity and, with reference to Homi K. Bhabha, considers how these writers offer an alternative space for negotiating the ambivalence of hybridity.

Theorising Literary Islands is an epistemological study of the development of the Robinsonade genre, its ideological functions within contemporary Anglophone cultural thought, and the role of literary and filmic mediation in constructing twentieth and twenty-first century European and American relations with and to the Pacific region.

This volume of essays by scholars in the field of English and American studies brings together a variety of perspectives on the utopian literature originating from cultural communities from 1790-1910. Ranging from the Lunar society to the Nationalist movement, and from the Transcendentalists to the Indian Monday Club the fifteen peer-reviewed articles examine a wide range of contexts in which utopian literature was written, and will be of interest to scholars in the field of cultural and literary studies alike. Moreover, the volume presents the reader with a unique overview of developments in Utopian thinking and literature throughout the long nineteenth century. Specific attention is paid to the transatlantic nature of cultural communities in which utopian writings were produced and read as well as to the colonial contexts of nineteenth-century utopian literature. As such, the collection offers a novel approach to a tradition of utopian writing that was essentially transcultural. Marguérite Corporaal (Radboud University Nijmegen) and Evert Jan van Leeuwen (Leiden University) are lecturers in English and American literature in the Netherlands.

Pathologies of Paradise presents the rich complexity of anglophone Caribbean literature from pluralistic perspectives that contest the reduction of the region to Edenic or infernal stereotypes. But rather than reiterate the familiar critiques of these stereotypes, Supriya Nair draws on the trope of the detour to plumb the depths of anti-paradise discourse, showing how the Caribbean has survived its history of colonization and slavery. In her reading of authors such as Jamaica Kincaid, Michelle Cliff, V. S. Naipaul, Zadie Smith, Junot Díaz, and Pauline Melville, among others, she examines dominant symbols and events that shape the literature and history of postslavery and postcolonial societies: the garden and empire, individual and national trauma, murder and massacre, contagion and healing, grotesque humor and the carnivalesque. In ranging across multiple contexts, generations, and genres, the book maps a syncretic and flexible approach to Caribbean literature that demonstrates the supple literary cartographies of New World identities.

"Polk weaves threads from history, literature, mythology, cartography, and geography into a tapestry attesting the durability of the myth."-A. J. R. Russell-Wood, Choice. To early explorers and geographers California represented a terrestrial paradise. It was Atlantis, Arcadia, Avalon, El Dorado, the Garden of Eden, the Land of Milk and Honey, the Pleasure Dome of Kublai Khan. It was always a magnet for dreamers. In this fascinating book Dora Beale Polk examines the dreams and myths that influenced the discovery and exploration of California. Throughout, Polk treats the long-held concept of California as an island, going back to medieval lore that filled an unknown ocean with rich, mysterious ideal islands. Columbus carried the lore to the New World, expecting to find islands teeming with gold, pearls, fabulous creatures, and Amazon women. Cortis was led by the "romance of the islands." Balboa, Cabrillo, Drake, Ascensisn, Kino, and many others entered into the making of the island myth. The discoveries and explorations of all the major figures are traced and their reports analyzed as they relate to California's geography and to the dreams overlaying it. Dora Beale Polk is a professor of English at California State University at Long Beach. She has published popular suspense novels and poetry as well as scholarly works.

What mythical creature can kill a person just by staring at him? Who went on a sacred quest to find the Holy Grail? What legendary island is said to have sunk into the sea? Find out the answers to these questions and more in Kids InfoBits Presents: Myths, Fairy Tales, Legends, and Fables. Myths, Fairy Tales, Legends, and Fables contains authoritative, age-appropriate content covering a range of topics, from Greek myth and the Grimm Brothers to leprechauns and dragons. The content, arranged in A-Z format, provides interesting and important facts and is geared to fit the needs of elementary school students. Kids InfoBits Presents contains content derived from Kids InfoBits, a content-rich and easy-to-use digital resource available at your local school or public library.

This volume contains a collection of articles that include both case studies and theoretical insights applicable to the tourism development challenges of tropical coastal and island destinations throughout the world. Topics include the shortcoming of (eco)tourism in Madagascar, collaboration theory and successful multi-stakeholder partnerships on Indonesian resort islands, resilience theory and development pressures on a Malaysian island, results and implications of a detailed survey of cruise passengers in Colombia, perceptions of underdevelopment as limiting factors in Costa Rica, and conflicts of perception and reality through the literary myths of Pitcairn Island. This book was published as a special issue of Tourism Geographies.