Islands and Continents PDF Download

Author: John Minford
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9789622098442
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
From one of the most celebrated literary figures in Hong Kong comes this collection of short stories. Seeing Hong Kong through a kaleidoscope, the author poignantly represents Hong Kong through a variety of themes.

Author: Patrick D. Nunn
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824865448
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Islands—as well as entire continents—are reputed to have disappeared in many parts of the world. Yet there is little information on this subject concerning its largest ocean, the Pacific. Over the years, geologists have amassed data that point to the undeniable fact of islands having disappeared in the Pacific, a phenomenon that the oral traditions of many groups of Pacific Islanders also highlight. There are even a few instances where fragments of Pacific continents have disappeared, becoming hidden from view rather than being submerged. In this scientifically rigorous yet readily comprehensible account of the fascinating subject of vanished islands and hidden continents in the Pacific, the author ranges far and wide, from explanations of the region’s ancient history to the meanings of island myths. Using both original and up-to-date information, he shows that there is real value in bringing together myths and the geological understanding of land movements. A description of the Pacific Basin and the "ups and downs" of the land within its vast ocean is followed by chapters explaining how—long before humans arrived in this part of the world—islands and continents that no longer exist were once present. A succinct account is given of human settlement of the region and the establishment of cultural contexts for the observation of occasional catastrophic earth-surface changes and their encryption in folklore. The author also addresses the persistent myths of a "sunken continent" in the Pacific, which became widespread after European arrival and were subsequently incorporated into new age and pseudoscience explanations of our planet and its inhabitants. Finally, he presents original data and research on island disappearances witnessed by humans, recorded in oral and written traditions, and judged by geoscience to be authentic. Examples are drawn from throughout the Pacific, showing that not only have islands collapsed, and even vanished, within the past few hundred years, but that they are also liable to do so in the future.

Author: Elizabeth Mcmahon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781785271892
Category : Australia
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Australia is the planet's sole island continent. This book argues that the uniqueness of this geography has shaped Australian history and culture, including its literature. Further, it shows how the fluctuating definition of the island continent throws new light on the relationship between islands and continents in the mapping of modernity. The book links the historical and geographical conditions of islands with their potent role in the imaginaries of European colonisation. It prises apart the tangled web of geography, fantasy, desire and writing that has framed the Western understanding of islands, both their real and material conditions and their symbolic power, from antiquity into globalised modernity. The book also traces how this spatial imaginary has shaped the modern 'man' who is imagined as being the island's mirror. The inter-relationship of the island fantasy, colonial expansion, and the literary construction of place and history, created a new 'man': the dislocated and alienated subject of post-colonial modernity. This book looks at the contradictory images of islands, from the allure of the desert island as a paradise where the world can be made anew to their roles as prisons, as these ideas are made concrete at moments of British colonialism. It also considers alternatives to viewing islands as objects of possession in the archipelagic visions of island theorists and writers. It compares the European understandings of the first and last of the new worlds, the Caribbean archipelago and the Australian island continent, to calibrate the different ways these disparate geographies unifed and fractured the concept of the planetary globe. In particular it examines the role of the island in this process, specifically its capacity to figure a 'graspable globe' in the mind. The book draws on the colonial archive and ranges across Australian literature from the first novel written and published in Australia (by a convict on the island of Tasmania) to both the ancient dreaming and the burgeoning literature of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the twenty-first century. It discusses Australian literature in an international context, drawing on the long traditions of literary islands across a range of cultures. The book's approach is theoretical and engages with contemporary philosophy, which uses the island and the archipleago as a key metaphor. It is also historicist and includes considerable original historical research.

Author: Brian Russell Roberts
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822373203
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
Departing from conventional narratives of the United States and the Americas as fundamentally continental spaces, the contributors to Archipelagic American Studies theorize America as constituted by and accountable to an assemblage of interconnected islands, archipelagoes, shorelines, continents, seas, and oceans. They trace these planet-spanning archipelagic connections in essays on topics ranging from Indigenous sovereignty to the work of Édouard Glissant, from Philippine call centers to US militarization in the Caribbean, and from the great Pacific garbage patch to enduring overlaps between US imperialism and a colonial Mexican archipelago. Shaking loose the straitjacket of continental exceptionalism that hinders and permeates Americanist scholarship, Archipelagic American Studies asserts a more relevant and dynamic approach for thinking about the geographic, cultural, and political claims of the United States within broader notions of America. Contributors Birte Blascheck, J. Michael Dash, Paul Giles, Susan Gillman, Matthew Pratt Guterl, Hsinya Huang, Allan Punzalan Isaac, Joseph Keith, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, Craig Santos Perez, Brian Russell Roberts, John Carlos Rowe, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Ramón E. Soto-Crespo, Michelle Ann Stephens, Elaine Stratford, Etsuko Taketani, Alice Te Punga Somerville, Teresia Teaiwa, Lanny Thompson, Nicole A. Waligora-Davis

Author: Patrick Nunn
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631189671
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
In most accounts of geographical phenomena, islands in the middle of the oceans are marginalised and implicitly viewed as of little imortance. This is a convenient rather than a rational view and one which is comprehensively disposed of in this book which examines the great diversity of island environments worldwide and the controls on their development.

Author: Beate M.W. Ratter
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319638696
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
This book is dedicated to the study of the islands and their role in a globalised world. Beside Coastal or Oceanic/Marine Geography, there is little comprehensive material about the speciality of small island geography so far. This volume aims to bridge natural, social and cultural science perspectives. In Geography of Small Islands readers learn about the physical development of islands, their cultural and political importance, as well as their economic particularities. This book appeals to researchers, students and scholars with an interest in the special characteristics in spatialities of islands.

Author: Barbara A. Somervill
Publisher: Children's Press
ISBN: 9780531134153
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Together, Australia and the many small islands of Oceania make up Earths smallest continent. Yet though the continent is small, it is packed with plenty to see. Readers will hop from island to island as they examine the incredible wildlife and landscapes of Australia and Oceania. Along the way, they will also explore the continents history with rich text and stunning visuals, and meet the people who call it home"--

Author: Bobbie Kalman
Publisher: Crabtree Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780778734147
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Crabtree Publishing will sweep young readers away on an exploration of Earth's many continents in this latest title. Some of the topics covered in this book are bodies of water, the equator, poles, and hemispheres, latitude and longitude, urban and rural areas, landforms, extreme continents, and many more.

Author: Stephen A. Royle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135358761
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
First Published in 2004. Islands have always fascinated people. They often seem remote and mysterious, set between the continents on which most people live. Indeed, many people choose islands for their perfect holiday idyll. In practice, however, the everyday social and economic reality is often very different. A Geography of Islands firstly examines the differing ways islands are formed. Despite the uniqueness of such islands in terms of shape, size, flora and fauna, and also their economic and developmental profiles, they all share certain characteristics and constraints imposed by their insularity. These present islands everywhere with a range of common problems. A Geography of Islands considers how their small scale, isolation, peripherality and often a lack of resources, has affected islands, in the present day and their past. It considers and discusses population issues, communications and services, island politics and new ways of making a living, especially tourism, found within contemporary island geography. A Geography of Islands gives a comprehensive survey of ‘islandness’ and its defining features. Stephen A. Royle has visited and studied 320 islands in 50 countries in all the world’s oceans. It is full of up-to-date global case studies, from Okinawa to Inishbofin, and Hawaii to Crete. In the final chapter, all the themes are brought together in a case study of the Atlantic island of St Helena. It is well illustrated with the author’s own photographs and maps. This book will appeal to those studying islands as well as those with an interest in the topic, particularly those engaged in dealing with small island economies.

Author: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Publisher: Philaletheians UK
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Ambitious scholiasts, men of a small sub-race born but yesterday, and one of the latest issues of the Aryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious thought of the world, and succeeded. For nearly two thousand years they impressed thinking Humanity with the belief in the existence of Satan. Plato merged the history of Atlantis, which covered several million years, into one event which he located on one small island about the size of Ireland, whereas the priests spoke of Atlantis as a continent vast as all Asia and Libya put together. The statements of Herodotus that the Atlantes who were vegetarians, whose sleep was never disturbed by dreams, and who cursed the sun because his excessive heat scorched and tormented them, are all based on moral and psychic facts and not on physiological disturbance. Atlas is the old continents of Lemuria and Atlantis, combined and personified in one symbol. He supports the sacred islands and continents on its shoulders. The poets attribute to Atlas a superior wisdom and a thorough acquaintance with the depths of the ocean because both Lemuria and Atlantis bore races instructed by divine masters; and both were transferred to the bottom of the seas, where they now slumber until their next reappearance above the waters. The feet of Atlas tread the earth while his shoulders support the celestial vault, an allusion to the gigantic peaks of the Lemurian and Atlantean continents. Proud Atlas, having sunk one third of its size into the waters, its two parts remained as a heirloom of Atlantis. Atlas and the Teneriffe Peak, now two of the dwarfed relics of the lost continents, were thrice as lofty during the day of Lemuria and twice as high in that of Atlantis. Alchemy had its birth-place in Atlantis during the Fourth Race, and had only its renaissance in Egypt. So secret was the knowledge of the last islands of Atlantis, on account of the superhuman powers possessed by its inhabitants (the last direct descendants of Divine Kings) that to divulge its whereabouts and existence was punished by death. To the uninitiated profane the dead letter was religion, and interpretation a sacrilege. Dead letter could neither edify nor uplift him. But to initiated philosopher Hesiod’s Theogony is as historical as any history can be. Poseidon-Neptune, the grandson of Ouranos, is the Hindu Idaspati, and identical with Narayana, the mover in (not on) the waters. Ouranos was the first astronomical teacher of men because he is one of the seven Dhyani-Chohans overseeing that second race. Ouranos gave birth to the Saturnian Titans of the Third Race, and it is they who mutilated him. For when creation by divine will was superseded by physical procreation, they needed Ouranos no more. Poseidon-Neptune and Nereus, who fathered the Nereids, are one: the former is the ruler or spirit of Atlantis before the beginning of its submersion; the latter, after. Poseidon is the titanic strength of the living race; Nereus, its spirit reincarnated in the subsequent Fifth or Aryan Race. Poseidon is of the earth earthy, strong and self-asserting, sensual, jealous, and vindictive, because he symbolises the spirit of the Atlantean Race that lives above the surface of the seas and which is composed of giants, the children of Eurymedon, the race that fathered Polyphemus and the one-eyed Cyclopes. The key to the mysteries of the Christian as well as of the Grecian Theogonies and Sciences, is the Secret Doctrine of the prehistoric nations. The standing army of Atlantis is given as upwards of a million men; its navy as 1,200 ships plus 240,000 men. Such statements are quite inapplicable to Poseidonis, a small island state of about the size of Ireland! Ethnologically, the seven daughters of Atlas or Atlantides are the seven sub-races, as they are credited with having married gods and having become mothers of famous heroes, the founders of many nations and cities. Astronomically, the Atlantides have become the seven Pleiades. Esoterically, the two are connected with the destinies of nations, as shaped by past events according to Karmic law. The Secret Doctrine shows that the founders of the Root-Races have all been connected with the Polar Star. The Aryan race was born and developed in the far north, however, after the sinking of Atlantis its tribes emigrated south into Asia. Hence Prometheus is son of Asia, and Deukalion, his son, the Greek Noah. Cyclopes, the beloved priests of Apollo, were the last three sub-races of the northern race, the Lemurians. The single eye stands for the all-penetrating spiritual eye, which atrophied when their pastoral life evolved into the sensual culture of the Atlanteans, only to be replaced by the outward-looking eyes of lust and greed. Odysseus-Ulysses belongs to the cycle of the heroes of the Atlantean Fourth Race. His adventure with the pastoral giants is an allegory of the gradual passage from the Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the sophisticated culture and physical proclivities of the Atlanteans. That other allegory, which makes Apollo kill the Cyclops to avenge the death of his son Asklepios (by Zeus with a lightning bolt fashioned by Cyclopes) refers to the Hyperborean Arimaspian Cyclopes, the last race endowed with the Wisdom-eye. In his occult aspect, Apollo is patron of Number Seven. Cosmically and astronomically, he is the Sun personified. Psychically and spiritually, his significance is far more important. The Greeks naturalised the gods they “borrowed” and made Hellenes of them, and the moderns helped them. To make a difference between Lemuria and Atlantis, the ancient writers referred to the latter as the northern or Hyperborean Atlantis, and to the former as the Southern one. Geologically, Leto-Latona is the Hyperborean Continent and its Race. The quarrel of Latona with Niobe, the Atlantean race, allegorizes the history of the two continents. Latona-Lemuria is transformed into Niobe-Atlantis, over which her son Apollo, or the Sun, reigns with an iron rod, truly, since Herodotus makes the Atlantes curse his too great heat. The Lemuro-Atlantean, is the first physical race, though the third and the fourth in number. The Lemurians, as also the early Atlanteans, were divided into two opposing fraternities, the Sons of Darkness, and the Sons of Light. There were terrible battles between the two. The island of Delos, the Asteria of the Greek mythology, was never in Greece, a country which, in its day, was not yet in existence, not even in its molecular form. Diodorus Siculus and Pliny place Delos in the Northern seas. One calls it royal; the other, the royal island of gods. Because the divine dynasties of the kings of Atlantis proceeded from that place. Occult records and linguistic evidence indicate that gods, religious beliefs, and myths have all come from the north, which was also the cradle of physical man. The Hyperboreans, the Cimmerians, the Arimaspoi, and the Scythians were descendants of the last Atlantean sub-races. But they were neither known to, nor communicating with, the Greeks. The Pelasgians, a remnant of an Atlantean sub-race, were certainly one of the root-races of future Greece. Noah’s Deluge is astronomical and allegorical but not mythical. However, the allegory about the antediluvian giants and their achievements in sorcery is no myth. Poseidon is not only the personation of the spirit and race of Atlantis, but also of the vices of the Nephilim giants of Genesis. The bestiality of the Satyrs was real, not allegorical. Esoteric records show these hairy Satyrs to be the last descendants of those Lemuro-Atlantean races, which begot children on female animals, of species now long extinct. They paid a very heavy price for their unnatural union. The whole globe is convulsed periodically; and has been so convulsed, since the appearance of the First Race, four times. Yet, though the whole face of the earth was transformed thereby each time, the conformation of the Arctic and Antarctic poles has but little altered. Continents perish in turn by fire and water: either through earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or by sinking and the great displacement of waters. The three “imprisoned” polar giants, Briareus, Kottos, and Gyges, are three polar lands which have changed form several times, at each new cataclysm or disappearance of one continent to make room for another. When lesser gods and titans rebelled against Zeus, he hurled Lemuria amid thunder and lightning to the bottom of the seas, so as to make room for Atlantis, which was to be submerged and perish in its turn. The geological upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a repetition on a small scale of the great cataclysm; and remaining impressed on the memory of the Greeks, was merged by them into, and confused with, the general fate of Atlantis. All continents are formed from North to South. And the tallest men are those in Northern countries, while the smallest are Southern Asiatics. Thus also the giants of Atlantis, as well as the Titans of Hesiod, are all Northerners.