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Published: 26th June 1992

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"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.

A learned, humane, provocative "creative reading" of the mutiny on the Bounty - the events; their meaning and representation in native lore, British life, the theater, and cinema; and their historical value. An engaging style and familiarity with political, naval, theater and film history, with anthropology, and with thinkers such as Foucault, Barthes, and Levi-Strauss enrich this "celebratory narrative," as Dening (History/Univ. of Melbourne) calls it. The story is familiar but, Dening says, the emphasis, meaning, explanation, and value change depending on the point of view, the period, culture, and medium in which one represents the character of Bligh (a perfectionist who preferred to avoid physical punishment) and the sailors; the idea of discipline in the navy; the participants' various expectations; the natives they encountered; the brutality and brutalization, abandonment and retribution; and the survivors' colony on Pitcairn Island. In the theatrical terms Dening employs, the mutiny becomes an enactment of roles, a ritual representing universal experiences of sacrifice, deification, resurrection, possession, encounters between natives and strangers, and the ranging iconography of power as it appears among natives and seamen. Dening's "cliometrics" (the statistics on corporeal punishment in the navy); his discussions of Jonas Hanway, of Captain Cook's adventures among the Polynesians, of the British popular theater, of the five films based on the Bounty (including the moral one in the 30's, the political one in the 60's, and the psychological one in the 80's); the encyclopedic knowledge he brings - all add conviction to his imaginative interpretations and demonstrate his proposition that "history is something we make rather than something we learn." A fascinating, essential chapter in the history of the Bounty. (Kirkus Reviews)

ISBN: 9780521383707
ISBN-10: 0521383706
Audience: Tertiary; University or College
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 459
Published: 26th June 1992
Dimensions (cm): 23.4 x 15.6  x 2.6
Weight (kg): 0.781