The Rock Observed : : Studies in the Literature of Newfoundland / / Patrick O'Flaherty.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press eBook-Package Archive 1933-1999
• VerfasserIn: O'Flaherty, Patrick,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2020]; ©1979
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Heritage
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (256 p.)

Since the beginnings of white settlement in Newfoundland, writers have set down greatly varying impressions of its landscape and distinctive culture. Descriptions of the land’s abundance and beauty collide with reports of its unrelieved barrenness. The image of a ‘barbarous, perfidious, and cruel’ people is countered by testimony to their shrewdness, resourcefulness, and good humour. The Rock Observed is a study of how Newfoundland has been perceived over the centuries by the islanders themselves and by outsiders. It offers an integrated survey of Newfoundland literature, culture, and history. It illustrates the forces that have made Newfoundland a special place and Newfoundlanders a special people, ‘a breed apart.’Against a background of political, economic, and cultural history, Patrick O’Flaherty submits the conflicting literary impressions of his island to a searching critical analysis. He finds the writings of explorers, missionaries, settlers, adventurers, novelists, and poets to be limited, or enlivened, by their own characters and preconceptions. There emerges a sympathetic but unsentimental picture of Newfoundland and its people, informed throughout by O’Flaherty’s keen awareness, based on an outport upbringing, of what Newfoundland has been and is.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Illustrations -- Maps -- 1. ‘It passeth England’ -- 2. Fishers of men -- 3. Walking new ground -- 4. The triumph of sentiment -- 5. The lure of the north -- 6. Emigrant muse -- 7. Bridging two worlds -- 8. Visions and revisions -- 9. The case of George Tuff -- Notes -- Credits for illustrations -- Index