EL2040:04
*Strangers in the South Pacific
Cairns
Inadmissable Subject Combination: EL3040
12 lectures, 24 tutorials. Second semester.
Staff: Dr R Lansdown.
The South Seas have been a particular object for Eurocentric imaginative scrutiny ever since the beginning of the eighteenth century. The South Sea Bubble, the Cook voyages and the Bligh mutiny were early instances; later writers like Melville, Stevenson and Gauguin, saw the area in quite different, explicitly romantic terms; in the twentieth century imaginative perceptions have changed all over again. The South Seas are, all at once it seems, a ‘dark continent’ awaiting civilisation and exploitation, an escapist idyll and a mirror in which Western writers have seen their own disappointments.
Learning Objectives:
- to broaden and intensify the literary-critical skills and understanding attained by students at earlier levels, particularly where essay writing and extra-literary issues are concerned;
- to attain a full and close understanding of particular set texts;
- to achieve a reasonable understanding of the patterns of ‘Eurocentric’ imaginative responses to the South Pacific area (loosely defined) since the period of discovery and colonisation.
Assessment by participation in discussion (20%); one assignment of 1,500 words (30%); one essay of 3,000 words (50%).
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