| This dissertation analyses various literary responses to the “discovery” of the South Pacific islands and possible motivations for a sudden, short-lived frenzy that swept across Europe with images of paradisical, erotic-exotic islands in the second half of the eighteenth century. Chapter 1 summarizes the history of Pacific discoveries from Magellan to Cook. Chapter 2 discusses common relations between Europe and its Other and shows several functions that the “foreign” South Pacific served in the late eighteenth century. Chapter 3 includes an overview of the genre of travel literature and reflects on the publishing success of South Seas travelogues. In Chapter 4 the argument is made that the South Pacific occupied a special position within the eighteenth-century consciousness, because it, unlike Africa, Asia, and the Americas, the islands offered the prototype of the Noble Savage as well as an ideal stage for European colonial and sexual desires. For the sciences they offered challenging new data including an entire new race for anthropology. Chapter 5 carries out a close analysis of nine South Pacific travelogues from England, France, and Germany written between 1765 and 1785 and analyzes idealizing motifs such as the image of paradise/utopia, the Noble Savage, and a merging of antiquity and native cultures. In addition, this thesis establishes an underlying notion of feminization and sexualization of the South Seas in literature and art, based on the parallel of woman and land in the act of conquest. The fascination of the enlightened male middle class with the islands can be attributed to their sexual dissatisfaction with the de-sexualized European woman, which in the eighteenth century was restricted to a maternal role. The chapter concludes by examining the extent to which travelogues belonged to developing pornographic genres. Chapter 6 analyzes three major negative aspects of the South Seas: cannibalism, “abnormal” sexuality, and syphilis. Chapter 7 offers a short description of the German (un)colonial situation. An examination of nine German literary productions about the South Pacific, written between 1770 and 1810, shows that German authors projected their longing for the colonial and sexual adventures onto the South Pacific. |
