Pacific Islands Writing: The Postcolonial Literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Oceania »

Michelle Keown was born and raised in Aotearoa/New Zealand. She is currently Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh and has published widely on Mäori, Pacific Island and New Zealand writing.

The Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures series offers stimulating and accessible introductions to definitive topics and key genres and regions within the rapidly diversifying field of postcolonial literary studies in English.

The first book of its kind, Pacific Islands Writing offers a broad-ranging introduction to the postcolonial literatures of the Pacific region. Drawing upon metaphors of oceanic voyaging, Michelle Keown takes the reader on a discursive journey through a variety of literary and cultural contexts in the Pacific, exploring the Indigenous literatures of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, and also investigating a range of European or Western writing about the Pacific, from the adventure fictions of Herman Melville, R. L. Stevenson, and Jack London to the P:akeh:a European) settler literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The book explores the relevance of 'international' postcolonial theoretical paradigms to a reading of Pacific literatures, but it also offers a region-specific analysis of key authors and texts, drawing upon Indigenous Pacific literary theories, and sketching in some of the key socio-historical trajectories that have inflected Pacific writing. Well-established Indigenous Pacific authors such as Albert Wendt, Witi Ihimaera, Alan Duff, and Patricia Grace are considered alongside emerging writers such as Sia Figiel, Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, and Dan Taulapapa McMullin. The book focuses primarily upon Pacific literature in English - the language used by the majority of Pacific writers - but also breaks new ground in examining the growing corpus of francophone and hispanophone writing in French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Easter Island/Rapa Nui.

List of Maps and Figures     xi
Pacific Islands Timeline     xii
Introduction: Voyaging Through the Pacific     1
'Mapping' Pacific literatures     1
Defining Oceania: from 'South Seas' to 'South Pacific'     11
Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia: the 'culture areas' of the Pacific     13
Key concepts and theoretical frameworks     17
Chapter overview     25
Europeans in the Pacific     28
European representations of the Pacific in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries     29
Disease and degeneration: the impact of social Darwinism on fin-de-siecle Pacific writing     39
Settler fictions in Aotearoa/New Zealand     51
Warfare and Westernization: Narratives of Conflict, Resistance, and Social Change     68
Colonial endeavours and Indigenous responses in the early twentieth century: inscribing resistance     70
War in the Pacific     80
Maori warrior culture     99
The 1970s and Beyond: The Emergence of the 'New' Pacific Literatures in English     109
Papua New Guinea     111
Fiji and the University of the South Pacific     116
Hawai'i and the 'American Pacific'     126
The Francophone Pacific     133
Easter Island/Rapa Nui: Hispanophone Pacific literature     137
The Maori Renaissance and the emergence of Maori literature in English     138
Orality, Textuality, and Memory: The Language of Pacific Literatures     147
Pacific orthographies, contact languages, and the rise of English     148
Oceanic oral and textual culture     162
Mythology and cultural memory     178
Conclusion: Pacific Diasporas     185
Globalization and Pacific diaspora culture     186
Pacific literary culture since 1990     196
Contemporary developments: drama and film     207
Notes     226
Glossary and List of Acronyms     231
References     234
Index     253