James Cook (1728-1779)
(source:
http://www.pbs.org/wayfinders/polynesian3.html)
introduction
Cook’s language has attracted interest for a
variety of reasons.
As a government-supported explorer in the early
days of the British empire, Cook was involved in the spread of the
English language beyond the British isles. Recent studies of Cook by
authors like Carter, Currie, and MacLaren have considered the functions
of his writing in the conquest and colonization of Australia and Canada.
Cook’s voyages brought new words into the
English language, as Gray’s article attests. New species like the
kangaroo taxed contemporary practices of scientific taxonomy. Ellis ("Tails
of Wonder") and Percy have independently described the efforts of Cook
and the gentleman scientist Joseph Banks to describe and to classify the
kangaroo.
Studies of Cook’s writings demonstrate
linguistic prescriptivism in practice. Politics and public interest
prompted the official publication of the records of Cook’s three voyages.
Publishing in an age of prescriptivism, the self-educated Cook had to be
seen to write correctly. The manuscripts of his voyage journals were
edited by John Hawkesworth (voyage 1) and John Douglas (voyages 2 and
3). McIntosh and Percy have compared Cook’s grammar with his editors’,
and early Cook with the later Cook — whose language became noticeably
more correct.
online resources
biography
- Beaglehole, J.C. 1974. The Life
of Captain James Cook. Volume 4 of the series The Journals of
Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery. London: The Hakluyt
Society.
- Hough, Richard. 1994. Captain
James Cook: a biography. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
writings (and bibliography)
- Cook, James. 1955-1974. The
Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, ed. J.C.
Beaglehole. Cambridge and London: for Hakluyt Society by the
University Press.
language
- Carter, Philip. 1987. "'An Outline
of Names'". In The Road to Botany Bay. An Essay in Spatial
History, 1-33. London and Boston: Faber and Faber.
- Currie, Noel Elizabeth. 1994.
"Captain Cook At Nootka Sound and Some Questions of Colonial
Discourse". Ph.D. thesis, University of British Columbia.
- Currie, Noel Elizabeth. 1994.
"Cook and the Cannibals: Nootka Sound, 1778". Lumen (Selected
Proceedings From the Canadian Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies)
13. 71-8.
- Ellis, Markman. 1998. "Tails of
Wonder. Constructions of the Kangaroo in Late Eighteenth Century
Scientific Discourse." In Science and exploration in the Pacific.
European voyages to the southern oceans in the eighteenth century,
ed. Margarette Lincoln. Boydell Press in association with the
National Maritime Museum.
- Gray, Douglas. 1983. "Captain Cook
and the English Vocabulary". In Five hundred years of words and
sounds. A festschrift for Eric Dobson, eds. E.G. Stanley and
Douglas Gray, 49-62. Cambridge: Brewer.
- McIntosh, Carey. 1986. Common
and Courtly Language. The Stylistics of Social Class in 18th-Century
English Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
- Percy, Carol. 1996. "In the
Margins: Dr Hawkesworth's Emendations to the Language of Captain
Cook's Voyages". English Studies 77. 549-587.
- Percy, Carol. 1991. "Variation
Between -(e)th and -(e)s Spellings of the Third Person
Singular Present Indicative: Captain James Cook's Endeavour
Journal, 1768-1771". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 92.
351-358.
- Percy, Carol. 1992. "The Verb
Shoalden in Captain James Cook's Endeavour Journal,
1769-1771". Notes and Queries 39. 68-70.
- Percy, Carol. 1995. "Grammatical
Lapses in Dr John Hawkesworth's Voyages (1773)". Leeds
Studies in English 26. 145-68.
- Percy, Carol. 1996. "Eighteenth
Century Normative Grammar in Practice: The Case of Captain Cook". In
Derke Britton (ed.), English historical linguistics 1994. Papers
from the 8th international conference on English historical
linguistics (8 ICHEL, Edinburgh, 19-23 September 1994), 339-362.
Amsterdam and Atlanta: John Benjamins.
- Percy, Carol. 1996. "'To Study
Nature Rather Than Books': Captain James Cook As Naturalist Observer
and Literary Author". Pacific Studies 19. 1-30.
- Percy, Carol. 1997. "Erratum:
Captain Cook As Navigator and Narrator: A Reappraisal". Pacific
Studies 20. 162-3.
Cook & authorship
- Beaglehole, J.C. Cook the
Writer. The Sixth George Arnold Wood memorial lecture. Sydney:
Sydney University Press.
- MacLaren, I.S. 1992.
"Exploration/Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Author".
International Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue Internationale
D'études Canadiennes5. 39-68.
- Pearson, W.H. 1971. "Hawkesworth's
Alterations". Journal of Pacific History 7. 45-72.
- Wallis, Helen. 1978. "Publication
of Cook's Journals: Some New Sources and Assessments". Pacific
Studies 1. 163-94.
Cook’s authorship in context
- Adams, Percy Guy. 1983. Travel
Literature and the Evolution of the Novel. Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky.
- Dening, Greg. 1992. Mr Bligh's
Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Edwards, Philip. 1994. The
Story of the Voyage. Sea-Narratives in Eighteenth-Century England.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(for additions, contact
Carol Percy)
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