Empire on a Small Scale: Robert Louis Stevensonâs Footnote as a SÄmoan Microhistory

Lucio De Capitani

Jump to Content

Chapter 6 Empire on a Small Scale: Robert Louis Stevensonâs Footnote as a SÄmoan Microhistory

äºScottish Literature of the South Seas

èèï¼

Lucio De Capitani

Lucio De Capitani
Search for other papers by Lucio De Capitani in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed

ç±»å:: ç« è

Page Range:: 92â106

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004682177_008

Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

â¬42.00â¬35.00Â excl. VAT

Add to Cart

æ¾åè®¿é®ä»¤ç

Robert Louis Stevensonâs interest for historiography and historical modes of narration has been well established in recent scholarship, thanks to seminal works like Barry Menikoffâs Narrating Scotland (2005) and Roslyn Jollyâs Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific (2009). Building on these studies, this chapter elaborates on Stevensonâs approach to historical narratives in the last phase of his production by comparing two non-fictional texts, dedicated, respectively, to Samoa and Scotland: A Footnote to History (1892), his account of the Samoan Civil War, and Records of a Family of Engineers (1896), his unfinished, posthumously published history of the Stevenson family. Through this juxtaposition, this chapter highlights two seemingly opposing trends in Stevensonâs historiographical approach. On the one hand, in the Footnote, Stevenson anticipates formal strategies employed by micro-historians like Carlo Ginzburg decades later: most notably, he focuses on a reduced scale and on singular, extraordinary events that are able to question and estrange mainstream historical narratives. On the other hand, in Records, one of Stevensonâs key strategies is to narrate family history through a variety of mythological patterns (such as frontier and biblical narratives), locating the individual experiences of his ancestors within recognizable, traditional schemes.These two approaches, and by consequence the two texts, are in conflict: mythology actively establishes grand, unifying narratives, whereas microhistory is meant to be a critical counterpoint to those very narratives. However, these approaches also coexist because they both share the purpose of reducing raw historical âdataâ to ânarratable objects,â and are at least in part intertwined within Stevensonâs heterogeneous, ambivalent telling of world history.

å¼ç¨ä¿¡æ¯

Save
Cite
Email this content

Share Link

Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend
Email this content
or copy the link directly:

https://brill.edhh.ma/abstract/book/9789004682177/BP000016.xml
The link was not copied. Your current browser may not support copying via this button.

Link copied successfully

Scottish Literature of the South Seas

Critical Studies of Scotland and the Pacific

ä¸ç¼ï¼ SCROLL: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature, å·ï¼ 35and SCROLL: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature Online, å·ï¼ 35

Cover Scottish Literature of the South Seas

ISBN:: 9789004682177

åºçç¤¾:: Brill

å°å·åºçæ¥æ:: 25 Dec 2024

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

Front Matter

Back Matter

ProCite

RefWorks

Reference Manager

BibTeX

Zotero

EndNote

ç»è®¡æ°æ®

	å¨é¨æé´	è¿å»ä¸å¹´	è¿å»30å¤©
æè¦æµè§æ¬¡æ°	1107	219	56
å¨ææµè§æ¬¡æ°	18	4	0
PDFä¸è½½æ¬¡æ°	6	3	0

African Studies	Education	Media Studies
American Studies	History	Middle East and Islamic Studies
Ancient Near East and Egypt	Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Musicology
Art History	International Law	Philosophy
Asian Studies	International Relations	Religious Studies
Biblical Studies	Jewish Studies	Slavic and Eurasian Studies
Biology	Languages and Linguistics	Social Sciences
Book History and Cartography	Life Sciences	Theology and World Christianity
Classical Studies	Literature and Cultural Studies

Subjects

AppBar-Authors 2025

AppBar-Open Access 2025

AppBar-Product Information 2025

AppBar-Company 2025

AppBar-Contact 2025

Chapter 6 Empire on a Small Scale: Robert Louis Stevensonâs Footnote as a SÄmoan Microhistory

å¼ç¨ä¿¡æ¯

Share Link

Scottish Literature of the South Seas

Critical Studies of Scotland and the Pacific

ç®å½

åèèµæ

ç»è®¡æ°æ®

ç»è®¡æ°æ®

Chapter 6 Empire on a Small Scale: Robert Louis Stevensonâs Footnote as a SÄmoan Microhistory

å¼ç¨ä¿¡æ¯

ç»è®¡æ°æ®