From Island to Island, and Beyond

Author(s):  
Johannes Riquet

Chapter 1 examines the centrality of islands as gateways to the New World. The texts examined in it poeticize spatial experiences that oscillate between a sense of emergence and possibility and a corresponding fear of submergence and dissolution. The chapter begins by discussing accounts by immigrants passing through Angel Island and Ellis Island in the context of a long tradition of real and imaginary voyages to America. It then turns to two transoceanic island narratives. The first is Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611), which is read alongside accounts of England’s early colonial experiments on Roanoke Island. It is argued that Shakespeare’s play and the Roanoke documents negotiate an island arrival that is both hopeful and fraught with uncertainty. The second is Cecil B. DeMille’s film Male and Female (1919), which imagines a sort of fictional Ellis Island, thereby responding to a long line of island arrivals in the New World.

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 219-247
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Burzyńska

AbstractThe Tempest is the only play in the Shakespearean canon that is open to a purely “Americanist” reading. Although Prospero’s island is located somewhere in the Mediterranean, numerous critics claimed that it deals with the New World (Hulme & Sherman 2000: 171). The paper revisits the existing interpretations, focusing on the turbulent relationship between Prospero and other inhabitants of the island: Caliban, Miranda, and Ariel. In the article I propose a rereading of their relation in the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche’s perspectivism, utilising Nietzsche’s key philosophical concepts like the Apollonian/Dionysian elements and der Übermensch (the overman). In his vast canon, Nietzsche refers to Native Americans only once and in passing. However, his call for the revaluation of all values seems to be an apt point of departure for a discussion on early colonial relations. Nietzsche’s perspectivism enables to reread both the early colonial encounters and character relations on Shakespeare’s island. Hence, in an attempt at a “combined analysis”, the paper looks at Prospero as the potential overman and also offers a reading of the English source texts that document early encounters between the English and native inhabitants of North America (Walter Raleigh, Richard Hakluyt, Thomas Harriot, Robert Gray).


2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry A. Wheeler

AbstractMallochianamyia Santos-Neto was proposed as a replacement name for Gayomyia Malloch, 1933 (preoccupied by Gayomyia Banks, 1913), an unplaced genus of acalyptrate Diptera from Chile and Argentina. The genus comprises 12 species: M. cladostyla sp. n.; M. fenestrata sp. n.; M. flavitibia sp. n.; M. furcata sp. n.; M. gallina sp. n.; M. latigena sp. n.; M. magnipalpis sp. n.; M. nigrohalterata (Malloch) comb. n.; M. penai sp. n.; M. setosa sp. n.; M. truncata sp. n.; M. vexans sp. n. All new species are illustrated and a key to species of Mallochianamyia is provided. The monophyly of the genus is supported by three characters of the male and female genitalia. Mallochianamyia is most closely related to the New World genera Paraleucopis Malloch and Schizostomyia Malloch and an undescribed Australian genus. The group cannot be placed in any established family as currently defined, although there are affinities to some families in the Asteioinea sensu J. F. McAlpine (1989). Research on the morphology and relationships of genera related to Mallochianamyia is required to clarify the familial status of the group.


Author(s):  
Cameron B. Strang

This chapter examines natural knowledge among natives and newcomers from the 1500s to the mid-1700s. It suggests that European-Indian encounters generated new knowledge, patronage relationships, and webs of exchange that affected intellectual life among both groups. The chapter includes sections on conquistadors in sixteenth-century Florida, patronage networks in Florida’s mission communities, cartography and the Indian slave trade, and the networks through which Europeans and Indians exchanged specimens and commodities. In short, Europeans and natives valued knowledge and the experts who produced it as sources of power and, from the 1500s through the 1700s, learned about their mutually new world during encounters involving violence, geopolitical competition, and exchange.


Author(s):  
Edward Polanco

Nahua peoples in central Mexico in the late postclassic period (1200–1521) and the early colonial period (1521–1650) had a sophisticated and complex system of healing known as tiçiyotl. Titiçih, the practitioners of tiçiyotl, were men and women that had specialized knowledge of rocks, plants, minerals, and animals. They used these materials to treat diseases and injuries. Furthermore, titiçih used tlapohualiztli (the interpretation of objects to obtain information from nonhuman forces) to ascertain the source of a person’s ailment. For this purpose, male and female titiçih interpreted cords, water, tossed corn kernels, and they measured body parts. Titiçih could also ingest entheogenic substances (materials that released the divinity within itself) to communicate with nonhuman forces and thus diagnose and prognosticate a patient’s condition. Once a tiçitl obtained the necessary information to understand his or her patient’s affliction, he or she created and provided the necessary pahtli (a concoction used to treat an injury, illness, or condition) for the infirm person. Finally, titiçih performed important ritual offerings before, during, and after healing that insured the compliance of nonhuman forces to restore and maintain their patients’ health.


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