Angličtina
What is 'island'? And what is 'island writing'? The author explores these concepts through a close reading of A Voyage to New Guinea, and the Moluccas , an account of Thomas Forrest s travels in the Malay Archipelago. Having more to offer than merely ethnographical and scientific data, the report is a cultural product anchored in the realm of eighteenth-century English travel writing, with its distinctive literary conventions. Additionally, it is a text in which the instability of meaning parallels the definitional precariousness of island that historically defies monolithic interpretation of scholars in cartography, geography and literary studies. At a disciplinary crossroads, 'A Quest for Insularity' should be of interest to scholars and students of textual interpretation, eighteenth-century English print culture and literary tradition, European discovery literature, and Southeast Asian maritime history.
