The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History PDF
Preview The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History
THE ROAD A N E X P 1 LORA T I O N O F LANDSCAPE AN! ) HISTORY --. /S'v r / :V % - $ o’> • PAUL CARTER ( | r v I. I It R A R Y c “Dazzlingiy original—one of the great books about travelling and a landmark in the true discovery of Australia. It deals with what L belongs deeply to ‘culture’: the means by which we open new spaces and make of them areas of knowledge where language and event can find room. The writing has a SANTA C.I.ARA, CA 9505 1 lyrical passion in argument that I found ir¬ resistible. I couldn’t put it down.” — D AV1D MALOUF This trail-blazing re-evaluation of the origins of Australia is a work of powerful imagination. Paul Carter takes insights from many disciplines — philosophy, city planning, sociology, linguis¬ tics, psychoanalysis, and art history—and brings them to bear in a deeply original way on the sub¬ jects of travel, exploration, and settlement. Australian history is a history of travelling, Carter makes clear; and, as in America, the Euro¬ pean newcomers were forever on the move. As they travelled, they wrote about what they saw, for before they could truly call the land their own, they had to symbolize and name it, give it recognizable features and frame its horizons— make it habitable by equipping it with a history. Drawing on reports and diaries, Carter shows how the first colonists and explorers gave Aus¬ tralia “a local habitation and a name.” He reads their narratives and maps, not for the usual his¬ torical or geographical data, but for the drama they record: writing and travelling are analogous activities, he suggests; escaping convicts, pio¬ neers, and wandering aborigines emerge as crea¬ tures of their own authentic histories, translating strange, unknown spaces into a network of fa¬ miliar landscapes they call home. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 https://archive.org/details/roadtobotanybayeOOOOcart THE ROAD TO 99 Y C'53 THE ROAD TO An Exploration of Landscape and History PAUL CARTER SANTA CLARA PUBLIC LIBRARY 2635 Road Homestead Santa Clara, CA 95051 Alfred A. Knopj • New York • ig88 SANTA CLARA PUBLIC LIBRARY M231563 THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. Copyright © 1987 by Paul Carter All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited, London. Library of Congress C5taloguing-in-Publication Data Carter, Paul. The road to Botany Bay. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Australia—History—To 1788. 2. Australia— History—1788-1851. I. Title. du98. 1. c37 1988 994 87-46076 isbn 0-394-57035-9 Manufactured in the United States of America FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
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