The Rock Observed

Studies in the Literature of Newfoundland

Bibliographic Data

ID19903085
AuthorsPatrick O'Flaherty (corresponding author), Patrick O’Flaherty (corresponding author)
Year1979
Publication date1979-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueThe Rock Observed (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Toronto Press (PUBLISHER • CA)
DOI10.3138/9781487577834
OpenAlexW3032327400
ISBN9781487577834
LanguageEN
Citations received13

Since the beginnings of white settlement in Newfoundland, writers have set down greatly varying impressions of its landscape and distinctive culture. Descriptions of the land’s abundance and beauty collide with reports of its unrelieved barrenness. The image of a ‘barbarous, perfidious, and cruel’ people is countered by testimony to their shrewdness, resourcefulness, and good humour. The Rock Observed is a study of how Newfoundland has been perceived over the centuries by the islanders themselves and by outsiders. It offers an integrated survey of Newfoundland literature, culture, and history. It illustrates the forces that have made Newfoundland a special place and Newfoundlanders a special people, ‘a breed apart.’Against a background of political, economic, and cultural history, Patrick O’Flaherty submits the conflicting literary impressions of his island to a searching critical analysis. He finds the writings of explorers, missionaries, settlers, adventurers, novelists, and poets to be limited, or enlivened, by their own characters and preconceptions. There emerges a sympathetic but unsentimental picture of Newfoundland and its people, informed throughout by O’Flaherty’s keen awareness, based on an outport upbringing, of what Newfoundland has been and is

Archaeology · Geography · Canadian Identity and History · Geology · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Short Stories in Global Literature

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