With elegance and candor, Greg Dening offers a panoramic collection of rich and densely textured essays that demonstrate how we can only understand our present through our consciousness of the past and how in thinking about the past we mirror the time and place of our own living. For Dening, history saturates every moment of our cultural and personal existence. Yet he is keenly aware that the actual past remains fundamentally irreplicable. All histories are culturally crafted artifacts, commensurate with folk tales, stage plays, or films. Whether derived from logbooks and letters, or displayed on music hall stages and Hollywood back lots, history is in essence our making sense of what has and continues to happen, creating for us a sense of our cultural and individual selves. Through juxtapositions of actual events and creative reenactments of them—such as the mutiny on the Bounty in 1787 and the various Hollywood films that depict that event—Dening calls attention to the provocative moment of theatricality in history making where histories, cultures, and selves converge. Moving adeptly across varied terrains, from the frontiers of North America to the islands of the South Pacific, Dening marshals a striking array of diverse, often recalcitrant, sources to examine the tangled histories of cross-cultural clash and engagement. Refusing to portray conquest, colonization, and hegemony simply as abstract processes, Dening, in his own culturally reflexive performance, painstakingly evokes the flesh and form of past actors, both celebrated and unsung, whose foregone lives have become our history.

Performances

Dening, Greg

Humor & Entertainment

University of Chicago Press

history and anthropology explores the meaning, relationships, rituals, and symbols of culture in the islands.

Islands and Beaches. Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas, 1774-1880

History

World

Dorsey Press

"Captain Bligh" is a cliche of our times for the extravagant and violent misuse of power. In fact, William Bligh was one of the least physically violent disciplinarians in the British navy. That paradox inspires the author to ask why, then, did Bligh have a mutiny? Its answer is to display the theatricality of naval institutions and the mythologizing power of history. Mr Bligh's Bad Language is an anthropological and historical study of the mutiny on the Bounty, and its role in society and culture. Throughout the book, Greg Dening draws on a wide range of intellectual influences, ending with the cinematic versions of the mutiny in the twentieth century.

Mr Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theater on H. M. Armed Vessel Bounty

Australia & Oceania

Cambridge University Press

William Bligh was one of the least violent disciplinarians in the British navy. It is this paradox that inspires an analysis of the infamous voyage of the Bounty in the context of other explorations and revolutions as well as the disclosure of more startling revelations concerning the mutiny.

Mr Bligh's Bad Language

Europe

Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty have become proverbial in their capacity to evoke the extravagant and violent abuse of power. But William Bligh was one of the least violent disciplinarians in the British navy. It is this paradox that inspired Greg Dening to ask why the mutiny took place. His book explores the theatrical nature of what was enacted in the power-play on deck, on the beaches of Tahiti and in the murderous settlement at Pitcairn, on the altar stones and temples of sacrifice, and on the catheads from which men were hanged. Part of the key lies in the curious puzzle of Mr Bligh's bad language.

Mr Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty (Canto original series)

Islands and beaches: Discourse on a silent land : Marquesas, 1774-1880

Melbourne University Press

William Gooch died at Waimea on the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian chain. Pahupu, Hawaiian warriors 'cut-in-two' by their tattoos, killed him there. He was only twenty-two. Gooch's is a short life indeed on which to base a book. But Greg Dening uses the incident of his murder as the basis for a penetrating study of historical narrative and meaning. Gooch, the young astronomer on board the Daedalus, is written into history through the perceptions and intentions of the historian. This is 'history's anthropology'. The layers of interpretation and meaning are woven into the fabric of the history itself. And this is the historian entwined in the fragments of the past that are sought, found, reworked and retold.

The Death of William Gooch

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Melbourne University Publishing

...history is my passion. Writing it, teaching it, reading it fills the days and years of my life. In all passions, there is pain and pleasure. Greg Dening In this collection of writings some new, some previously published Greg Dening reflects on his experiences both as a historian and a participant in history. Performances brings together the personal and the scholarly, demonstrating how our lives are saturated with history, how we can only understand our present through our consciousness of the past and how in thinking about the past we mirror the time and place of our own living. Each of these essays can be enjoyed on its own, yet throughout them all run the common themes of the intricate relationships between past and present, the personal and the political, historical research and the imagination. Dening writes with elegance and candour, inviting readers to reflect upon their own participation in the performance of history.

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Melbourne University

The history of the virtually unknown Marquesas islands, located about 500 miles south of the equator and 1,000 miles east of Tahiti, reflects a society's horrific past in these narratives. Based on an anthropologist's fieldwork diary, this contemplative account explores the Marquesas's neglected history in four fabled stories detailing passionate and powerful images of national struggle and freedom.

Beach Crossings: Voyaging Across Times, Cultures and Self

Asia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dening, Greg. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dening, Greg

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dening, Greg. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Performances

Islands and Beaches. Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas, 1774-1880

Mr Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theater on H. M. Armed Vessel Bounty

Mr Bligh's Bad Language

Mr Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theater on H. M. Armed Vessel Bounty

Mr Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty (Canto original series)

Islands and beaches: Discourse on a silent land : Marquesas, 1774-1880

The Death of William Gooch

Performances

Beach Crossings: Voyaging Across Times, Cultures and Self