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by RICHARD PHILLIPS, Routledge, London, 1997, viii + 208 pp, cloth [Symbol Not Transcribed]45.00 (ISBN 0-415-13771-3); paper [Symbol Not Transcribed]14.99 (ISBN 0-415-13772-1)
In this carefully researched and thoughtful book, Richard Phillips provides a sophisticated interpretation of the role of English-language adventure literature in constructing and sometimes disrupting British imperial geographies and masculinities. His main thesis is that adventure stories map-provide representations of - the spaces of adventure in which they are set and also the (predominantly) masculine identities that are commensurate with those spaces. In so doing, they, like other maps, impose imaginative geographies onto real landscapes, and 'normalize the constructions of race, gender, class and empire those geographies inscribe' (p. 15). Phillips argues that adventure stories' naturalizing capacities are enhanced by the genre's descriptive style, which is typically simultaneously realistic and vague, thereby constructing terrae incognitae, upon which imperial geographical imaginations can be inscribed authoritatively. An important theme of the book is that while imperialism provided the main impetus for most adventure stories, the ostensible 'blankness' of adventurous spaces made them into malleable discursive 'raw materials' that could also be used to imagine and naturalize alternative and counter-hegemonic geographies and identities. In keeping with that overarching motif, the author first discusses adventure literature's tendency to support hegemonic constructions of the geographies of home and away, and then introduces progressively more ambivalent and resistant themes, culminating in postcolonial attempts to 'unmap adventure.'
The book's argument is developed through close readings of 12...