UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Fancy, Spectacle, and the Materiality of the Romantic Imagination in Pacific Exploration Culture Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3rm3h3q4 Author Wills, Kacie L. Publication Date 2018 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Fancy, Spectacle, and the Materiality of the Romantic Imagination in Pacific Exploration Culture A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Kacie L. Wills September 2018 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Adriana Craciun, Co-Chairperson Dr. Fuson Wang, Co-Chairperson Dr. George Haggerty Copyright by Kacie L. Wills 2018 The Dissertation of Kacie L. Wills is approved: Committee Co-Chairperson Committee Co-Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and guidance of my committee. Thank you, Dr. Craciun, for introducing me to the wonderful, wide world of global Romanticism and for showing me how my scholarship could be so much more varied and innovative than I had thought possible. Dr. Wang and Dr. Haggerty, thank you for your feedback and advice as I wrote and re-wrote these chapters. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with and learn from each of you. This project is indebted to support received from the CSU Chancellor’s Doctoral Incentive Program, from the UCR Alumni Research Grant, and from the Center for Ideas and Society. I am grateful for the opportunities provided by these organizations that allowed me to carry out necessary research in Wellington, New Zealand and in London. Many thanks to the British Library, the British Museum, and the Huntington Library for allowing me to use images from their collections in this dissertation. A special thank you to my family and friends for loving me during the times when I was more cave troll than human. Mom, thank you for always pushing me to be my best. Dad, thank you for reminding me to enjoy the good things in life, like the Eagles, Seinfeld, and a cold beer. Grampy, thank you for showing me the importance of having a generous spirit, even in difficult times. Lys(s), thank you for being my super sister. Finally, thank you to my dear Troy for believing in me, for supporting me, and for reminding me, daily when necessary, that I can do anything. You made finishing this dissertation possible. You are the best of the best. iv DEDICATION For Grammy v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Fancy, Spectacle, and the Materiality of the Romantic Imagination in Pacific Exploration Culture by Kacie L. Wills Doctor of Philosophy, English University of California, Riverside, September 2018 Dr. Adriana Craciun, Co-Chairperson Dr. Fuson Wang, Co-Chairperson My dissertation examines the productions of material and literary culture surrounding late eighteenth-century Pacific exploration, specifically the Cook voyages. By looking to these cultural productions, ranging from indigenous artifacts and tattoos, to ephemera collections and scrapbooks, to literary and theatrical productions about exploration and contact, I broaden the scope of our understanding of fancy in discussions of the Romantic imagination. I show fancy to be a material form of the imagination and both a driving force and product of exploration and scientific progress. In doing this, I also consider the connected role of spectacle in popular culture, its critical function in depictions of gender and indigeneity, and its foundational relationship to science and discovery. Throughout this dissertation, I look beyond the Romantic canon to understand larger issues of the period, including questions of indigenous representation, the role of female collectors in making scientific inquiries, and issues of sensationalism, spectacle, and empiricism that vi surrounded the struggle for narrative authority in a print-saturated culture. Ultimately, through turning to a broader historical and material context, I offer a way of reading fancy in Romantic poetry that complicates Coleridge’s definition of fancy as passive or mechanical; fancy, instead, is enlivened and shown to be an active and creative form of the imagination that engages meaningfully with global experience. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1-21 Chapter 1: Oh Me, Omai: Popular Pantomime, Tatau, and the Spectacle of Science 22-83 Chapter 2: Flights of Fancy: Sarah Sophia Banks’s Ballooning Scrapbook 84-163 Chapter 3: Fiction, Fancy, and Authority: Literary Responses to Cook’s Pacific Encounters 164-212 Chapter 4: Fancy and the Romantic Poetic Imaginings of the Pacific 213-257 Conclusion 258-265 Endnotes 266-280 Works Cited 281-297 viii LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1.1 Playbill Omai; or a Trip Around the World 74 Fig. 1.2 Illustration of the Gipsy and the Magician 75 Fig. 1.3 Illustration from Jocko the Brazilian Ape 76 Fig. 1.4 A Human Sacrifice in a Morai, in Otaheite, After John Webber 77 Fig. 1.5 William Hodges, A View of Maitavie Bay in the Island of Otaheite 78 Fig. 1.6 Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg, “Oberea” 78 Fig. 1.7 Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg, “Otoo” 79 Fig. 1.8 Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg, “Toha, Chief of Otaheite, Oedidee” 79 Fig. 1.9 Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg, “Prophet's Dress” 80 Fig. 1.10 Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg, “A Man of New Zealand” 80 Fig. 1.11 Joshua Reynolds, Omai 81 Fig. 1.12 Benjamin West, Sir Joseph Banks 82 Fig. 1.13 James Gillray, “The Great South Sea Caterpillar transform'd into a Bath Butterfly (Sir Joseph Banks)” 83 Fig. 2.1 “The Lovely Nymph” print from Sarah Sophia’s Scrapbook 146 Fig. 2.2 Matthew Darly, “The Fly Catching Macaroni” 147 Fig. 2.3 Matthew Darly, “The Botanic Macaroni” 148 Fig. 2.4 Matthew Darly, “A Macaroni Print Shop” 148 Fig. 2.5 Banks “Best Virginia” Tobacco Card 149 Fig. 2.6 Banks “Best Air Balloon Tobacco” Card 149 Fig. 2.7 Banks “Smoke the Balloon” Tobacco Card 150 Fig. 2.8 Banks Plantation Tobacco Card 150 Fig. 2.9 Sarah Sophia Banks Riddle Note 150 Fig. 2.10 “The British Balloon” Handbill from Sarah Sophia’s Scrapbook 151 ix Fig. 2.11 “Lunardi on the Thames” from Sarah Sophia’s Scrapbook 152 Fig. 2.12 Huntington Collection Aerial Nymph (view 1) 153 Fig. 2.13 Huntington Collection Aerial Nymph (view 2) 154 Fig. 2.14 “The Lady’s Balloon” from Sarah Sophia’s Scrapbook 155 Fig. 2.15 Huntington Scrapbook Note 156 Fig. 2.16 Huntington Scrapbook Piece of Aerial Ship 157 Fig. 2.17 “The Death of Madame Blanchard” 157 Fig. 2.18 Huntington Scrapbook “Mr. Cocking’s Parachute” 158 Fig. 2.19 Huntington Scrapbook Print of Mr. Cocking 158 Fig. 2.20 “Under the Sun” Note from Sarah Sophia’s Scrapbook 159 Fig. 2.21 Joshua Reynolds, “Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire” 160 Fig. 2.22 Matthew Darly, “Ridiculous Taste or the Ladies Absurdity” 161 Fig. 2.23 “The London Monster” Handbill from Sarah Sophia’s Scrapbook 162 Fig. 2.24 “A Real Apple” Handbill from Sarah Sophia’s Scrapbook 163 Fig. 4.1 William Hodges, A View taken in the bay of Oaite Peha [Vaitepiha] Otaheite [Tahiti] 255 Fig. 4.2 A Human Sacrifice in a Morai, in Otaheite, After John Webber, Illustration to A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean… 255 Fig. 4.3 Edmund Scott after John Webber, The Inside of the House, in the Morai, in Atooi 256 Fig. 4.4 . Daniel Lerpiniere after John Webber, A Morai, in Atooi 257 x Introduction Fancy and the Imagination The concept of fancy is integral to the Romantic imagination and the literature it produced. It is a form of the imagination discussed by every Romantic writer and particularly defined and critiqued in the writing of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge writes in Biographia Literaria, “Good Sense is the Body of poetic genius, Fancy its Drapery, Motion its Life, and Imagination the Soul that is everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole” (Ch. XIV). In this passage, Coleridge lays out the complex differentiations and hierarchies which characterize his understanding of the Romantic imagination. Fancy, here, is the only poetic element lacking in material and vital substance: body, motion, and soul. Fancy remains the only non-corporeal element and, as drapery, is presented as both superficial and curiously filled with potential for variety and inclusiveness. To access fancy’s potential, I will turn in this dissertation to its broader historical context, Pacific exploration, and to the culture of materiality and spectacle which characterize fancy in the period surrounding the Cook voyages. Throughout Biographia Literaria, Coleridge describes fancy as a lesser form of the imagination, drawing attention to its mechanical, passive, and accumulative properties, as well as its role in tainting experience and shaping false memory. On the other hand, the imagination carries the creative power, the potential to find meaning from the accumulations of fancy, as well as the possibilities of transformation. Considering Coleridge’s definition of this distinction alongside that of William Wordsworth, with 1 whom he collaborated on the seminal work, Lyrical Ballads, we can see room for fancy to occupy a more critical space in the formation of Romantic poetry. Wordsworth writes in the Preface to the 1815 edition of Lyrical Ballads that both the Imagination and Fancy have the power to “aggregate and to associate, to evoke and to combine” (xxxiii). He writes, however, that while the Imagination works in materials “plastic” and “pliant,” “Fancy does not require that the materials which she makes use of should be susceptible of change in their constitution, from her touch” (xxxiii).