A voyage round the
world / Georg Forster ; edited by Nicholas Thomas and Oliver
Berghof ; assisted by Jennifer Newell. - Honolulu :
University of Hawai'i press, 2000. - 2 vol. (XLVII-475, XV-[477]-860 p.) :
ill., cartes ; 25 cm.
ISBN 2-8248-2091-6
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| … celui qui a eu la chance de partir et d'avoir vingt ans dans les mers du Sud en compagnie du capitaine Cook.
☐ Jean-Jo Scemla,
“ Georges Forster l'Européen : du voyage autour du
monde à la Révolution française ” Les Temps modernes, n° 523, février 1990 |
NOTE DE L'ÉDITEUR : George Forster's A Voyage
round the world
presents a wealth of geographic, scientific, and ethnographic knowledge
uncovered by Cook's second journey of exploration in the Pacific
(1772-1775). Accompanying his father, the ship's naturalist Johann
Reinhold Forster, on the voyage, George proved a knowledgeable and
adept observer. The lively, elegant prose and critical detail of his
account, based loosely on his father's journal, make it one of the
finest works of eighteenth-century travel literature and an account of
prime importance in the history of european contact with Pacific
peoples. The Forsters' publications reveal the sophistication and
enthusiasm they brought to their observation of Polynesian peoples as
well as a sensitivity to the moral ambiguities of contact.
The
two volumes of George Forster's work include substantially richer
descriptions of encounters with island inhabitants than either his
father's classic work (Observations Made during a Voyage round the World, UH
Press, 1996) or Cook's official narrative, and its confident, even
visionary, style incorporates a good deal of polemic, particularly in
its criticism of the treatment of islanders by Cook's crew. In addition
to the range and depth of its anthropological considerations, it
provides a thrilling account of life aboard one of Cook's vessels.
In its author's German translation,
this work becomes a classic of natural history writing, but its
original English version has long been neglected by anglophone
scholars. This new scholarly edition makes this important book
readily available for the first time since its initial publication
more than two centuries ago. But it also presents the work in
fresh terms, make it more accessible and relevant to a contemporary
audience. The valuable introduction and annotations draw on the
wide range of anthropological and ethnohistorical scholarship
published since the 1960s and contextualize the book in relation
to both the cultures of Oceania documented by the Forsters and
the history of European voyaging in the Pacific. Appendixes include
a translation of the introduction to the German edition and the
polemical pamphlets by George Forster and the ship's astronomer
William Wales, in which some of the book's more controversial claims
were debated.
A Voyage Round the World
brings the disciplines of history and anthropology to bear on Cook's
voyages in an illuminating and readable fashion. This edition will help
complete the corpus of basic documents on Cook's voyages — a
crucial resource for researchers in cultural, Pacific, and maritime
history ; archaeologists, anthropologists, and art
historians ; and most recently for scholars engaged in revisionist
interpretations of eighteenth-century exploration and colonization.
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ROD EDMOND : […]
Forster's Voyage, of all
the eighteenth-century accounts of the Pacific, probably best
demonstrates the complex transactions and recognitions that accompanied
every Pacific landfall […].
George Forster's Voyage
has many different kinds of significance. Chronologically it
was the first published account of Cook's second voyage. George
was not subject to the same Admiralty controls as his father
[Johann Reinhold] and his work appeared six weeks before the
official record. Thomas and Berghof give a meticulous account
of its complex history of publication and reception. More significant
is George's nuanced understanding of his own « speaker-position ».
Reflecting on travellers' tales he wrote : « two
travellers seldom saw the same object in the same manner, and
each reported the fact differently, according to his sensations,
and his peculiar mode of thinking. It was therefore necessary
to be acquainted with the observer, before any use could be made
of his observations ». Accordingly, Forster continued,
« it was necessary for every reader to know the colour
of the glass through which I looked ». Forster's lens
is a very interesting one. Thomas and Berghof place him at the
intersection of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, his « horizon
of expectation » informed by Goethe and Sterne's Sentimental
Journey, his influence on Herder, Blumenbach and Kant palpable.
[…]
Cook's account of his second
voyage is often dull. J. R. Forster's Journals are fresh but
clumsily written ; his Observations is a meditation
on the voyage but not the thing itself. George's Forster's Journey
combines the immediacy of experience with developed reflection
upon it, and is much better written than anything by either Cook
or his own father.
[…]
My point is not that George's
account demonstrates more insight than the others, but to show
how experience and reflection are working together in a way not
often found in his father's work, and hardly at all in Cook's.
And, characteristically, George's is the most engaging and provocative
of the three. Both editors and publishers are to be thanked and
congratulated for making available this invaluable, handsome,
scholarly and user-friendly edition.
☐ Journal for Maritime Research, November 2001
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COMPLÉMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE | - Georg Forster, « A
voyage round the world in His britannic Majesty's Sloop Resolution,
commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4
and 5 », Londres : B. White, J. Robson, P. Elmsly and G. Robinson, 1777
- Georg
Forster, « Johann Reinhold Forster's (…) Reise um die
Welt während den Jahren 1772 bis 1775 », Berlin :
Haude und Spener, 1778-1780
- Georg Forster, « Reise um die Welt, illustriert von eigener Hand »
mit einem biographischen Essay von Klaus Harpprecht und einem
Nachwort von Frank Vorpahl, Frankfurt am Main : Eichborn (Die andere Bibliothek), 2007
| - Georg Forster, « Voyage autour du monde : Tahiti,
Nouvelle Calédonie » trad. de l'allemand
par Joël Lefebvre, Paris : Éd. des Écrivains,
2002
- Georg
Forster, « Voyage autour du monde : Antarctique,
île de Pâques, îles Marquises » trad. de l'allemand par Joël Lefebvre, Paris :
Éd. des Écrivains, 2004
| - William Wales, « Remarks
on Mr. Forster's account of captain Cook's last voyage round
the world [...] », Londres : J. Nourse, 1778
- Georg Forster, « Reply
to Mr. Wales's remarks », Londres : B. White,
J. Robson, P. Elmsly & G. Robinson, 1778
- Christoph Martin Wieland, « Auszüge
aus Johann Reinhold Forsters Reise um die Welt »,
Deutscher Merkur (Leipzig), 3. Bd & 4. Bd, 1778
- Georg Christian Lichtenberg,
« Einige Lebensumstände von Capt. James Cook,
größtentheils aus schriftl. Nachrichten einiger seiner
Bekannten gezogen », Göttingisches Magazin
der Wissenschaften und Literatur, Jg. I, Stück 2, 1780
(pp. 243-296)
- Marita Gilli, « Georg
Forster, l'œuvre d'un penseur allemand réaliste et révolutionnaire »,
Paris : Honoré Champion, 1975
- Jean[-Jo] Scemla, « Georges
Forster l'Européen — Du voyage autour du monde à
la Révolution française », Les Temps
Modernes, février 1990, 523 (pp. 137-187) ; Bulletin de la Sté des études océaniennes, 251-252,
septembre-décembre 1990 [ANA'ITE — la bibliothèque scientifique
numérique polynésienne : téléchargement]
- Georg
Christian Lichtenberg und Georg Forster, « Cook der Entdecker : Schriften
über James Cook », Leipzig : Reclam Verlag,
1991
- Johann Reinhold Forster, « Observations
made during a voyage round the world » ed. by Nicholas
Thomas, Harriet Guest & Michael Dettelbach, Honolulu :
University of Hawai'i Press, 1996
- Doris Kaufmann, « Les
sexes et la nature humaine dans le Voyage autour du monde
de Georg Forster », Gradhiva, revue d'histoire
et d'archives de l'anthropologie (Paris), 1998
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mise-à-jour : 23 août 2019 |

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