title: Pacific Pastoralism: Ancient poetics & the deconstruction of American paradise
abstract: This aim of this thesis is to deconstruct the etymology of the word "paradise" within the context of early Pacific narratives by popular American authors, and then within today's tourist propaganda. Fundamental to that process is the imagination of "Pacific Pastoralism," in which the pastoral tradition is considered as a predecessor to American traditions of describing the landscapes and peoples of the Pacific region, as those descriptions fueled an economy forcibly mapped onto that space. Herei