This book tracks across history and cultures the ways in which writers have imagined cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons, collectively understood as tropical weather. Historically, literature has drawn upon the natural world for its store of symbolic language and technical device, making use of violent storms in the form of plot, drama, trope, and image in order to highlight their relationship to the political, social, and psychological realms of human affairs. Charting this relationship through writers such as Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, Gisèle Pineau, and other writers from places like Australia, Japan, Mauritius, the Caribbean, and the Philippines, this ground-breaking collection of essays illuminates the specificities of the ways local, national, and regional communities have made sense and even relied upon the literary to endure the devastation caused by deadly tropical weather.

Approaches tropical weather through an international array of contributors based in Japan, Australia, USA, Canada, and the UK Offers a wealth of source material including plays, novels, oral stories, travelogue, poetry, and some visual story texts Discusses the topic of natural disaster both in a metaphorical and physical sense.

Autorentext

Anne Collett is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Russell McDougall is Professor of English at the University of New England, Australia.

Sue Thomas is Professor of English at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.

Inhalt
Tracking the Literature of Tropical Weather, Anne Collett, Russell MacDougall, and Sue Thomas.- Tropical Cyclones in Mauritian Literature, Srilata Ravi.- Pacific Revolt: The Typhoon, Japan, and American Imperialism in Melville's Moby-Dick, Sascha Morrell.- Tropical Modernism in Joseph Conrad's Sea Tales, Arnold Anthony Schmidt.- Through the Eye of Surplus Accumulation: Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus and Typhoon, Sudesh Mishra.- Flood, Storm and Typhoon in Tanizaki Junichiro's The Makioka Sisters, Leith Morton.- Cyclones, Indigenous and Invasive, in Northern Australia, Russell McDougall.- Salba Istorya / Salba Buhay: Save Story / Save Life: Collaborative Storying in the Wake of Typhoons, Merlinda Bobis.- Resistance in the Rubble: Post-San Zenón Santo Domingo from Ramón Lugo Lovatón's Escombros: Huracán del 1930 to Carlos Federico Pérez's La ciudad herida, Maria Cristina Fumagalli.- Cycles and Cyclones: Structural andCultural Displacement in Gisèle Pineau's Macadam Dreams, Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado.- Catastrophic History, Cyclonic Wreckage and Repair in William Gilbert's The Hurricane and Diana McCaulay's Huracan, Sue Thomas.- Hurricane Story (with special reference to the poetry of Olive Senior), Anne Collett.- Bibliography.- Notes on Contributors.- Index.