Title: Mapping men and empire
First published: 1997
Description: Adventure stories, produced and consumed in vast quantities in eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, narrate encounters between Europeans and the non-European world. They map both European and non-European people and places. In the exotic, uncomplicated and malleable settings of stories like Robinson Crusoe, they make it possible to imagine, and to naturalise and normalise, identities that might seem implausible closer to home.

They make it possible to map new forms of masculinity, as writers such as Robert Ballantyne sought to do. At the same time, adventure stories chart colonies and empires, projecting European geographical fantasies onto non-European, real geographies, including the Americas, Africa and Australasia.

But beneath the map-like realism of adventure stories, there is an undercurrent of ambivalence. Adventure's geography is more fragile and also more fluid than it first appears. While adventure stories map, they also unmap geographies and identities, destabilising and sometimes recasting them.

The ambivalent geography and politics of adventure are illustrated in late-Victorian and Edwardian girls' stories, in which boundaries between masculinity and femininity are blurred, and in contemporaneous stories by Jules Verne, which can be read as anarchist adventures.
Subjects: Adventure stories, Australian, Adventure stories, English, Adventure stories, French, Australian Adventure stories, Books and reading, Boys, Colonies in literature, Difference (Psychology) in literature, English Adventure stories, French Adventure stories, Geography in literature, History and criticism, Imperialism in literature, Intercultural communication in literature, Masculinity in literature, Men, Travel in literature, Robinsonades, Imperialisme, Geografie, Masculinite dans la litterature, Geschichte, Robinsonade, Reizen, Colonies, Hommes, Colonies dans la litterature, Dans la litterature, Livres et lecture, Roman d'aventures francʹais, Communication interculturelle dans la litterature, Abenteuerliteratur, Entdeckungsreise, Voyage dans la litterature, Englisch, Roman d'aventures australien, Psychologie differentielle dans la litterature, Litterature anglaise, Imperialisme dans la litterature, Robinson Crusoe (Defoe, Daniel), Garcʹons, Histoire, Robinsonnades, Literatur, Literaire thema's, Abenteuerroman, Geographie, Avonturen, Roman d'aventures, Geographie dans la litterature, Masculinite (psychologie), Influence, Histoire et critique, Roman d'aventures anglais, Colonies dans la littérature, Dans la littérature, Impérialisme dans la littérature, Masculinité (psychologie), Géographie dans la littérature, Communication interculturelle dans la littérature, Psychologie différentielle dans la littérature, Masculinité dans la littérature, Littérature anglaise, Impérialisme, Géographie, Voyage dans la littérature, Garçons, Roman d'aventures français, Defoe, daniel, 1661?-1731, Australian fiction, history and criticism, English fiction, history and criticism, French fiction, history and criticism, Children, books and reading, Difference (Philosophy) in literature, LITERARY CRITICISM, European, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
People: Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731)
LC classification: PR830.A38 P48 1997