Mourning El Dorado

Mourning El Dorado PDF Author: Charlotte Rogers
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813942675
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
What ever happened to the legend of El Dorado, the tale of the mythical city of gold lost in the Amazon jungle? Charlotte Rogers argues that El Dorado has not been forgotten and still inspires the reckless pursuit of illusory wealth. The search for gold in South America during the colonial period inaugurated the "promise of El Dorado"—the belief that wealth and happiness can be found in the tropical forests of the Americas. That assumption has endured over the course of centuries, still evident in the various modes of natural resource extraction, such as oil drilling and mining, that characterize the region today. Mourning El Dorado looks at how fiction from the American tropics written since 1950 engages with the promise of El Dorado in the age of the Anthropocene. Just as the golden kingdom was never found, natural resource extraction has not produced wealth and happiness for the peoples of the tropics. While extractivism enriches a few outsiders, it results in environmental degradation and the subjugation, displacement, and forced assimilation of native peoples. This book considers how the fiction of five writers—Alejo Carpentier, Wilson Harris, Mario Vargas Llosa, Álvaro Mutis, and Milton Hatoum—criticizes extractive practices and mourns the lost illusion of the forest as a place of wealth and happiness.

Mourning El Dorado

Mourning El Dorado PDF Author: Charlotte Rogers
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813942675
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Get Book

Book Description
What ever happened to the legend of El Dorado, the tale of the mythical city of gold lost in the Amazon jungle? Charlotte Rogers argues that El Dorado has not been forgotten and still inspires the reckless pursuit of illusory wealth. The search for gold in South America during the colonial period inaugurated the "promise of El Dorado"—the belief that wealth and happiness can be found in the tropical forests of the Americas. That assumption has endured over the course of centuries, still evident in the various modes of natural resource extraction, such as oil drilling and mining, that characterize the region today. Mourning El Dorado looks at how fiction from the American tropics written since 1950 engages with the promise of El Dorado in the age of the Anthropocene. Just as the golden kingdom was never found, natural resource extraction has not produced wealth and happiness for the peoples of the tropics. While extractivism enriches a few outsiders, it results in environmental degradation and the subjugation, displacement, and forced assimilation of native peoples. This book considers how the fiction of five writers—Alejo Carpentier, Wilson Harris, Mario Vargas Llosa, Álvaro Mutis, and Milton Hatoum—criticizes extractive practices and mourns the lost illusion of the forest as a place of wealth and happiness.

The Devil-Tree of El Dorado

The Devil-Tree of El Dorado PDF Author: Frank Aubrey
Publisher: Graphic Arts Books
ISBN: 1513224603
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The Devil-Tree of El Dorado (1897) is a novel by Frank Aubrey. Set in the colony of British Guiana, the novel falls into the lost world genre of science fiction made popular by such writers as H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. What he lacks in name-recognition alongside these titans of popular fiction, Aubrey makes up for with a keen storytelling ability and a talent for merging history and geography with unsettling visions of monsters and gods. A staunch imperialist, Aubrey’s novel exhibits troubling depictions of the author’s racist ideology, and remains a difficult yet essential example of the function of literature in upholding global white supremacy. “Beneath the verandah of a handsome, comfortable-looking residence near Georgetown, the principal town of British Guiana, a young man sat one morning early in the year 1890, attentively studying a volume that lay open on a small table before him.” As all adventurers know, fortune tends to favor the bold. While this maxim, of course, never ensures success, it does grant confidence to those bold enough—or crazy enough—to push themselves to extremes in search of adventure. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, a small expedition sets out through the jungle to find the lost city of El Dorado, confident their destination—the treacherous Mt. Roraima—could hide what remains of a once-vibrant civilization. Despite the odds, they make it to the top of the plateau, where they discover a terrible being. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Frank Aubrey’s The Devil-Tree of El Dorado is a classic of British science fiction reimagined for modern readers.

Treasure, Treason and the Tower

Treasure, Treason and the Tower PDF Author: Paul R. Sellin
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9781409420255
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In this engaging book, the oft-told narrative of Sir Walter Raleigh is blown apart through the chance discovery of hitherto neglected correspondence in a Swedish archive. In place of a deceitful and scheming Raleigh, Sellin paints a picture of man executed on trumped-up charges by those hoping to profit from the very gold mine they claimed he had invented. It will be of interest not only to specialists of the period, but to anyone with a sense of the romance of history.

Orphans of Eldorado

Orphans of Eldorado PDF Author: Milton Hatoum
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1847673007
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
A magical retelling of the myth of Eldorado, by Brazil's greatest writer. The Enchanted City has inhabited the fevered dreams of many European navigators and consquisitadores, but all have been unable to find it on the map.

Creole Indigeneity

Creole Indigeneity PDF Author: Shona N. Jackson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816681952
Category : Caribbean Area
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
During the colonial period in Guyana, the countryOCOs coastal lands were worked by enslaved Africans and indentured Indians. In "Creole Indigeneity," Shona N. Jackson investigates how their descendants, collectively called Creoles, have remade themselves as GuyanaOCOs new natives, displacing indigenous peoples in the Caribbean through an extension of colonial attitudes and policies. Looking particularly at the nationOCOs politically fraught decades from the 1950s to the present, Jackson explores aboriginal and Creole identities in Guyanese society. Through government documents, interviews, and political speeches, she reveals how Creoles, though unable to usurp the place of aboriginals as First Peoples in the New World, nonetheless managed to introduce a new, more socially viable definition of belonging, through labor. The very reason for bringing enslaved and indentured workers into Caribbean labor became the organizing principle for CreolesOCO new identities. Creoles linked true belonging, and so political and material right, to having performed modern labor on the land; labor thus became the basis for their subaltern, settler modes of indigeneityOCoa contradiction for belonging under postcoloniality that Jackson terms OC Creole indigeneity.OCO In doing so, her work establishes a new and productive way of understanding the relationship between national power and identity in colonial, postcolonial, and anticolonial contexts.

The Gilded Man

The Gilded Man PDF Author: Adolph Francis
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781987409758
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
The Gilded Man is one of the best works in the field of history by the Adolph Francis . Its one of the vintage collection by the Adolph Francis .

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness PDF Author: Joseph Conrad
Publisher: Modernista
ISBN: 9180943640
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 109

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Book Description
Heart of Darkness is often considered the world’s best short novel. The book serves as a bridge between the 19th century and modernism, an adventure tale revolving around the ambiguity of themes such as truth, morality, and evil. Joseph Conrad witnessed the European exploitation of the Congo with his own eyes. He once sailed up the Congo River himself to locate a countryman at a trading station deep within the country – even though this man wasn't named Kurtz. The goal and enigma of the journey have become synonymous with this name, one of the most unforgettable fictional characters of our time. JOSEPH CONRAD [1857–1924] was born in Ukraine to Polish parents, went to sea at the age of seventeen, and ended his career as a captain in the English merchant navy. His most famous work is the novella Heart of Darkness [1899], adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola in 1979 as Apocalypse Now.

The Book of Buried Treasure

The Book of Buried Treasure PDF Author: Ralph D. Paine
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
The Book of Buried Treasure is a historical account of pirates and piracy, containing true stories of some of the most notorious buccaneers, their heists and robberies and the pirate gold that is lost forever. The book is written by American journalist and adventurer Ralph D. Paine who was indicted for piracy with a capital crime, after sailing on a boat that was smuggling munitions._x000D_ Table of Contents:_x000D_ The World-Wide Hunt for Vanished Riches_x000D_ Captain Kidd in Fact and Fiction_x000D_ Captain Kidd, His Treasure_x000D_ Captain Kidd, His Trial, and Death_x000D_ The Wondrous Fortune of William Phips_x000D_ The Bold Sea Rogue, John Quelch_x000D_ The Armada Galleon of Tobermory Bay_x000D_ The Lost Plate Fleet of Vigo_x000D_ The Pirates' Hoard of Trinidad_x000D_ The Lure of Cocos Island_x000D_ The Mystery of the Lutine Frigate_x000D_ The Toilers of the Thetis_x000D_ The Quest of El Dorado_x000D_ The Wizardry of the Divining Rod_x000D_ Sundry Pirates and Their Booty_x000D_ Practical Hints for Treasure Seekers

What a Way to Go

What a Way to Go PDF Author: Geoffrey Abbott
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312366568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
"In this wickedly humorous book, Geoffrey Abbott describes the effectiveness of instruments of torture and reveals the macabre origins of familiar phrases such as 'gone west' or 'drawn a blank'. Covering everything from the preparation of the victim to the disposal of the body 'What a Way to Go' is everything you ever wanted to know about the ultimate penalty--and a lot you never thought to ask."--Publisher's description

Jungle Fever

Jungle Fever PDF Author: Charlotte Rogers
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 0826518311
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The sinister "jungle"--that ill-defined and amorphous place where civilization has no foothold and survival is always in doubt--is the terrifying setting for countless works of the imagination. Films like Apocalypse Now, television shows like Lost, and of course stories like Heart of Darkness all pursue the essential question of why the unknown world terrifies adventurer and spectator alike. In Jungle Fever, Charlotte Rogers goes deep into five books that first defined the jungle as a violent and maddening place. The reader finds urban explorers venturing into the wilderness, encountering and living among the "native" inhabitants, and eventually losing their minds. The canonical works of authors such as Joseph Conrad, Andre Malraux, Jose Eustasio Rivera, and others present jungles and wildernesses as fundamentally corrupting and dangerous. Rogers explores how the methods these authors use to communicate the physical and psychological maladies that afflict their characters evolved symbiotically with modern medicine. While the wilderness challenges Conrad's and Malraux's European travelers to question their civility and mental stability, Latin American authors such as Alejo Carpentier deftly turn pseudoscientific theories into their greatest asset, as their characters transform madness into an essential creative spark. Ultimately, Jungle Fever suggests that the greatest horror of the jungle is the unknown regions of the character's own mind.