Constructing Colonial Discourse: Cook at Nootka Sound, 1778While Captain James Cook's South Pacific voyages have been extensively studied, much less attention has been paid to his representation of the Pacific Northwest. In Constructing Colonial Discourse, N.E. Currie focuses on the month Cook spent at Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island in 1778 during his third Pacific voyage. Comparing the official 1784 edition of that voyage with his Cook's journal account (made available in the scholarly edition prepared by New Zealand scholar J.C. Beaglehole), Currie demonstrates that the representation of North America's northwest coast in the late eighteenth century was shaped as much by the publication process as by British notions of landscape, natural history, cannibalism, and history in the new world.Most recent scholarship critiques imperialist representations of the non-European world, while taking these published accounts at face value. Constructing Colonial Discourse combines close textual analysis with the insights of postcolonial theory to critique the discursive and rhetorical strategies by which the official account of the third voyage transformed Cook into an imperial hero. |
Contents
Life in the Contact Zone | 3 |
Travel and Exploration Literature Constructing the New World | 19 |
Approaching Sublimity Aesthetics Exploration and the Northwest Coast | 43 |
Science and Ethnography The Field of Vision | 63 |
Cook and the Cannibals The Limits of Understanding | 87 |
Reconstructing Cook | 127 |
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Common terms and phrases
account of Nootka aesthetic Beaglehole III:1 Beaglehole's edition British Columbia Britons Burney Canada Canadian cannibalism cannibalism at Nootka canoes Captain Cook Captain James Cook century Charles Clerke CIHM Colonial Discourse contact zone context Cook's death Cook's journal Cook's third voyage Cook's voyages crew cultural Douglas III:2 Douglas's edition edition of Cook's eighteenth-century encounter European exploration literature flesh footnote fur trade George Vancouver Hawaii Hawaiians history painting human Ibid imperial inhabitants Island J.C. Beaglehole John land landscape Linnaean London Lono MacLaren Maori Maori cannibalism metaphor month at Nootka narrative Native natural non-European Nootka Sound North Northwest Coast Northwest Passage Nuu-chah-nulth observations officers Pacific Ocean painting Picturesque present published Queen Charlotte Sound readers Resolution and Discovery reveals Samwell scientific second voyage sexual ships South Pacific Sublime suggests territory texts of Cook's textual tion Toronto Travel Literature University Press Vancouver Webber women World writing Yuquot