KRAKATAU ON FIRE, THE DISASTER OF 1883 IN DUTCH COLONIAL LITERATURE: A POSTCOLONIAL APPROACH

<p>In 1883, the volcano Krakatau erupted and collapsed, causing the deaths of tens of thousands. The eruption was one of the first disasters to take place beyond the Dutch boundaries that received so much attention in the Netherlands. Although the disaster appealed to the imagination, it barely led to the publication of fiction. Only in Dutch Indies youth literature can one find something about the Krakatau. In this article, four Dutch stories and novels are analysed: “Stories of the moon” by Nellie van Kol-Porreij, The hermit of Rakata or Krakatau on fire by Robert Michael Ballantyne, “Nine Months on Krakatau” by B.L. Kailola and Escaped from the jaws of death: The Krakatau tragedy by Rick Blekkink. These sources are analysed from a postcolonial perspective focusing on unequal power relations. Focal points are the representation of the Indies and the indigenous people of the colony. This article illustrates the continuities and shifts in the representations over de course of time (1886-2014). </p>

Spaces of Adventure and Cultural Politics of Masculinity: R M Ballantyne and The Young Fur Traders

Masculinities reflect the characteristics of the spaces—real and imaginary, material and metaphorical—in which they are constructed. Mapmakers, ranging from academic geographers to popular storytellers, chart masculinist geographies: Spaces in which masculinities are mapped. One important genre of masculinist geographical narrative is adventure. I explore the masculinism of adventure through a detailed, contextual reading of one particular adventure story. The Young Fur Traders—a British Victorian boys' adventure story set in Canada, written by the Scottish writer Robert Michael Ballantyne. In the setting of The Young Fur Traders, Ballantyne mapped a form of masculinity known generally as Christian manliness. Literal journeys through the spaces of adventure constituted metaphorical journeys through adolescence, from white, middle-class boyhood to white, middle-class manhood. Settings—liminal, largely unknown but broadly realistic, male-dominated, primitive, simplified, and idealised spaces—were imprinted upon this masculinity. The settings of adventure stories arc cultural spaces in which hegemonic masculinity is mapped and, in some cases, unmapped.