Paul Arthur » Cartography

Literary and Cartographic Projections

Paul Arthur — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:54:06 +0000

The early novel was based upon and drew upon the textual traditions of descriptive travel writing, with the narrative structure of the novel mimicking the activity of travelling. The connection is so strong that travelling can be aligned with characteristics of narrative itself. As Paul Carter puts it, “voyaging and storytelling go together” (1998, p. 19). According to another critic, novels share a “spatial metaphor” with the accounts of voyages. The early novel, “more than any other genre,” is “spatial” (Freedman, 1968, p. 72). The spatial impulse is also illustrated when the protagonist takes on the role of the intrepid explorer, a position that removes the character from the familiarity of home and its known geographies and places them in unknown geographies as a discoverer.

Exploration and Endeavour

Paul Arthur — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 11:32:40 +0000

Exploration & Endeavour: The Royal Society of London and the South Seas celebrates the society’s 350th anniversary by bringing together a selection of iconic objects and original documents that highlight the society’s key role in European maritime exploration and discovery in the Pacific. The Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, was founded on the premise that knowledge should be subject to independent verification—‘freeing oneself from unexamined opinion, particularly through the study of empirical data’, as Andrew Sayers puts it in his introduction to the beautifully produced accompanying book publication. The society’s motto, Nullius in verba (‘Take no-one’s word for it’), attests to this commitment to independence of thought, underpinned by methodologically rigorous inquiry. Fellows of the society include larger-than-life figures who in many cases have revolutionised their field: Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Christopher Wren, Charles Darwin, Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein, Dorothy Hodgkin, Francis Crick, James Watson, Stephen Hawking and, with particular relevance in the Pacific context, James Cook and Joseph Banks.

Virtual Voyages

Paul Arthur — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 01:39:32 +0000

Born out of an ancient geographical theory of balance, the term ‘antipodes’ was first used to refer to the vast uncharted underworld of the southern hemisphere from a northern perspective. The principle behind this belief, as described in the Quarterly Review in the nineteenth century, was ‘that all the land, which had till then been discovered in the southern hemisphere, was insufficient to form a counterpoise to the weight of land in the northern half of the globe’. The idea of the antipodes as a counterbalance, though now remembered only as a peculiar, discredited theory, has been surprisingly influential as an imaginative concept. An antipodean expectancy filled minds, maps, novels and utopian plans, laying the foundations for perceptions of Oceania and Australasia that continue to impact on how this part of the world is seen from a distance as well as from within. The region of the antipodes has been occupied by European settlers and their descendants for a relatively short time. And yet, this brief period is set against a backdrop of one of the longest recorded histories of imagining prior to geographical discovery.

Teaching and Learning Guide: Antipodean Myths Transformed

Paul Arthur — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:51:51 +0000

Sample Syllabus:

Week 1: Introduction and Overview—Exploration and Colonisation of the Great South Land

- The myth of the antipodes—the allure of the great south land
- Gaps in maps—spaces for the imagination

Weeks 2–4: Fantasies of the Antipodes

- The role of imaginary voyage texts—blending reality with fantasy, pre-programming colonisation
- Myths of extreme difference
- Myths of Indigenous populations’ welcoming attitude to colonial intrusion
- Theories of otherness

Weeks 3–5: Entering the Antipodes

- Early explorers’ contradictory responses to Terra Australis Incognita
- Utopias and dystopias
- First contact with Indigenous people—the concept of ‘terra nullius’ framed by myths

Weeks 6–8: Images of Contemporary Australia: Enduring Myths

- The myth of terra nullius and the impact on Indigenous Australia
- The ‘dead heart’ of Australia as the last unfathomed antipodean space

Antipodean Myths Transformed

Paul Arthur — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 01:59:02 +0000

Australia and the South Pacific held a special status in the eighteenth century: this was the farthest region from Europe and the last part of the earth remaining for Europeans to explore and chart. In the context of European nations’ own histories of discovering and exploring the world beyond Europe’s borders, this region is unique in the sense that no other part of the earth had such a substantial and well-documented body of European thought devoted to it over such a long period of time prior to its physical discovery. The ‘antipodes’ existed in the European imagination for approximately two thousand years before Europeans set foot on antipodean lands. Myths inspired explorers to go searching for the genuine antipodes, and voyages were often undertaken with the specific aim of finding the uncharted places that punctuated otherwise formless maps.

Capturing the Antipodes

Paul Arthur — Thu, 25 Jul 2002 02:04:35 +0000

This chapter discusses the way seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europeans used myths and fantasies to help conceptualize cultural contact with the frontier world of the antipodes. The focus in the following pages is on a unique genre of literary fiction, known as the ‘imaginary voyage’, that played a special role in helping to articulate Europe’s colonial role in the frontier region of the antipodes. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, just as the first European explorers were setting foot on antipodean land, writers of imaginary voyages began offering enticing visions of natural wealth and the potential for colonialism in the antipodes. The region of the antipodes was the most popular setting for imaginary voyages in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Australia, as we know it today, did not accurately feature on European maps until the early nineteenth century.

Imaginary Conquests

Paul Arthur — Thu, 25 Nov 1999 02:07:21 +0000

European maps depicting the imagined extent of the Australian continent in the seventeenth century often featured curious images of elephants roaming the vast interior region. The Dutch map ‘Hollandia Nova’ by Danckerts (1690) and the Italian map ‘Het Niew Hollandt’ by Coronelli (1696), for example, both include images of elephants along with other embellishments such as natural waterspouts and native people striking elegant poses under palm trees. Clearly, it did not matter whether or not there had been any evidence of elephants actually living in those uncharted regions. In these examples, the elephants and the other far-fetched images surrounding them are included only as symbols of a world of potential rich trade and fruitful colonial contact for Europeans, drawn from familiar images of trade in Africa and India. As these maps show, Australia and the Pacific—the ‘Antipodes’ for Europeans in the late seventeenth-century—contained largely unknown spaces that had the potential to be imagined in an infinite variety of ways.