THE South Pacific seascape in the diaries of Mary Graham and Richard Dana, jr.

Abstract

This article explores the emergence of the seascape in the diaries of Mary Graham and Henry Dana during the first half of the 19th century. Valparaíso and the Island of Juan Fernández are South Pacific milestones where nature rises as a landscape, as well as a site of production in a Protestant ethos. Represented by aesthetic and literary allusions, the unruliness of the landscape alters the diarists’ subjectivities and the neocolonialist praxis of power.