ABSTRACT

This article examines the relationship between literary geography and the reconstruction of transnational places in Herman Melville’s Typee, originally published in 1846. This year of publication characterises the increasing American movement towards understanding exotic places and their cultural reflections on American society. Typee typifies this serious American identification with alien places as it is heavily devoted to the description of an American seafarer’s adventure on the island of Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands, an adventure which is believed to be partially based on Melville’s voyages in the Pacific Ocean. The article, however, is concerned with the geographic language of Melville’s narrator as it seeks to explain how the physical experiences of Typee’s narrator such as sightseeing, walking and escaping from the Island’s natives re-create a direct cultural mode of communication with the American public which departs from the old discourse of colonial maps. Notions of the American self and its spatial national identity must be reconsidered through the re-mapping of other distant places beyond the imaginative configurations of the American public. The article, thus, aims at decolonising the traditional meaning of maps that have always been geographically misrepresented for the cultural demarcation of the American identity.

摘要

本文考察了赫尔曼·梅尔维尔（Herman Melville）的《Typee》（最初于1846年出版）中文学地理学与跨国场所重建之间的关系。今年的出版物描绘了美国日益了解异国情调及其对美国社会的文化反思的运动。Typee用外国人的身分来代表这种严肃的美国身份，因为它专门描述了一名美国海员在南太平洋Marquesas群岛的Nuku Hiva岛上的冒险，这种冒险被认为部分地基于Melville在太平洋的航行海洋。但是，该文章与梅尔维尔（Melville）叙述者的地域语言有关，因为它试图解释讲述者的身体体验Typee的叙述者（例如观光，步行和逃离该岛的当地居民）重新建立了与美国公众的直接文化交流方式，这与殖民地地图的古老论述背道而驰。必须通过重新映射美国公众的想象力之外的其他遥远地方，重新考虑美国自我及其空间民族身份的观念。因此，该文章旨在非殖民化地图的传统含义，这些地图在地理上一直被错误地描绘为美国身份的文化划界。