Pacific Pastoralism: ancient poetics & the deconstruction of American paradise

Abstract

This aim of this thesis is to deconstruct the etymology of the word "paradise" within the context of early Pacific narratives by popular American authors, and then within today's tourist propaganda. Fundamental to that process is the imagination of "Pacific Pastoralism," in which the pastoral tradition is considered as a predecessor to American traditions of describing the landscapes and peoples of the Pacific region, as those descriptions fueled an economy forcibly mapped onto that space. Herein texts are analyzed via close-reading comparisons, historical research, and more lyrical methods such as rhetorical stargazing, echolocation, and narrative technique. While this thesis is indebted to scholars in the fields of American Studies and English literature, it attempts to open space for Pacific Island Studies to epistemologically counter its cultural materialist claims. In total, this thesis is a critique of tourist marketing, which was ferried from antiquity to the Pacific on wooden ships, and today renders beaches little more than golf course sand-traps.