The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific / Edition 2

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ISBN-10:: 0691057524
ISBN-13:: 9780691057521
Pub. Date:: 12/14/1997
Publisher:: Princeton University Press

ISBN-10:: 0691057524
ISBN-13:: 9780691057521
Pub. Date:: 12/14/1997
Publisher:: Princeton University Press

The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific / Edition 2

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Overview

Here Gananath Obeyesekere debunks one of the most enduring myths of imperialism, civilization, and conquest: the notion that the Western civilizer is a god to savages. Using shipboard journals and logs kept by Captain James Cook and his officers, Obeyesekere reveals the captain as both the self-conscious civilizer and as the person who, his mission gone awry, becomes a "savage" himself.

In this new edition of The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, the author addresses, in a lengthy afterword, Marshall Sahlins's 1994 book, How "Natives" Think, which was a direct response to this work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691057521
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/14/1997
Edition description:	With a New afterword by the author
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gananath Obeyesekere is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His many books include The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology and, with Richard Gombrich, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka (Princeton).

	List of Illustrations
	Preface
	Captain Cook and the European Imagination	3
	Myth Models	8
	Improvisation Rationality and Savage Thought	15
	The Third Coming: A Flashback to the South Seas	23
	The Visit to Tahiti and the Destruction of Eimeo	34
	The Discovery of Hawaii	40
	The Thesis of the Apotheosis	49
	Further Objections to the Apotheosis: Maculate Perceptions and Cultural Conceptions	60
	Anthropology and Pseudo-History	66
	Politics and the Apotheosis: A Hawaiian Perspective	74
	The Other Lono: Omiah, the Dalai Lama of the Hawaiians	92
	Cook, Lono, and the Makahiki Festival	95
	The Narrative Resumed: The Last Days	102
	The Death of Cook: British and Hawaiian Versions	109
	Language Games and the European Apotheosis of James Cook	120
	The Humanist Myth in New Zealand History	131
	The Resurrection and Return of James Cook	137
	The Versions of the Apotheosis in the Traditions of Sea Voyagers	142
	Cook, Fornication, and Evil: The Myth of the Missionaries	154
	On Native Histories: Myth, Debate, and Contentious Discourse	163
	Monterey Melons; or, A Native's Reflection on the Topic of Tropical Tropes	171
	Myth Models in Anthropological Narrative	177
	The Mourning and the Aftermath	187
Appendix I	The Destruction of Hikiau and the Death of William Watman	193
Appendix II	Kalii and the Divinity of Kings	197
	Notes	201
	Bibliography	237
	Index	245

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Editorial Reviews

Winner of the 1992 Louis Gottschalk Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Winner of the 1993 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in History, Association of American Publishers

From the Publisher

A remarkably rich and persuasive argument.

Current Anthropology - Nicholas Thomas

The whole book is admirable, impeccable, even at times brilliant.

The Washington Times - Simon Schama

A fascinating and important book . . . Obeyesekere examines [Cook's] murder and the events leading up to it in a fresh way.

The New York Times Book Review - Robert L. Levy

There are so many ways of patronizing the past, [Obeyesekere] as good as says, and one of them is to accept your own culture's version of it. For this reason alone, his book would be stimulating. But there is more, much of it centering around the personality of James Cook himself. That familiar, Queegish figure of a ship's master obsessed with theft, increasingly unhinged by whatever private ghosts ... is surely worth examining.

The New Republic - James Hamilton-Paterson

Without question the most provocative reassessment of the famed explorer's demise.... Obeyesekere has made a persuasive case for his counternarrative of Captain Cook, strongly supporting it with a fine-grained analysis of an impressive array of cultural material, some of it long submerged....

The Sciences - Amy Burce

In The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, a fascinating and important book, Gananath Obeyesekere ... examines the murder and the events leading up to it in a fresh way. He enlarges the debate about how we think not only about our own diminishing collection of heroes, but also about the outsiders of European history, in this case the eighteenth-century Hawaiians.

The New York Times Book Review - Robert I. Levy

A remarkably rich and persuasive argument.
— Nicholas Thomas

Current Anthropology

The whole book is admirable, impeccable, even at times brilliant.
— Simon Schama

The Washington Times

There are so many ways of patronizing the past, [Obeyesekere] as good as says, and one of them is to accept your own culture's version of it. For this reason alone, his book would be stimulating. But there is more, much of it centering around the personality of James Cook himself. That familiar, Queegish figure of a ship's master obsessed with theft, increasingly unhinged by whatever private ghosts ... is surely worth examining.
— James Hamilton-Paterson

The New Republic

Without question the most provocative reassessment of the famed explorer's demise.... Obeyesekere has made a persuasive case for his counternarrative of Captain Cook, strongly supporting it with a fine-grained analysis of an impressive array of cultural material, some of it long submerged....
— Amy Burce

The Sciences

A fascinating and important book . . . Obeyesekere examines [Cook's] murder and the events leading up to it in a fresh way.
— Robert L. Levy

The New York Times Book Review

The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific / Edition 2

The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific / Edition 2

Paperback

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

Temporarily Out of Stock Online

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

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Customer Reviews