Travel Writing; Pirates; 18th Century Research Papers (original) (raw)

This collection of new essays covers the myriad portrayals of the figure of the pirate in historical records, literary narratives, films, television series, opera, anime and games. Contributors explore the nuances of both real and fictional pirates, giving attention to renowned works such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, the Pirates of the Caribbean saga, and the anime One Piece, as well as less well known works such as pirate romances, William Clarke Russell’s The Frozen Pirate, Lionel Lindsay’s artworks, Steven Speilberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, and Pastafarian texts.

- by
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- Popular Culture, Literature and cinema, Cinema Studies, Robert Louis Stevenson
- by Joshua Grasso
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- Travel Writing; Pirates; 18th Century
- by Doug Coulson
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- American Literature, Rhetoric (Languages and Linguistics), Law, Comparative Law

Examines the historical identity and literary background of the eponymous hero of the first Polish serious opera of the Romantic period "Monbar, czyli Flibustierowie" [‘Monbar, or the Freebooters’] composed by Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (1807–1867) to a libretto by Ludwik Paprocki (ca. 1800–1881) and Seweryna Pruszakowa née Żochowska (1815–1905).
Dobrzyński finished Monbar in 1838 but it was not performed until 1863. Some excerpts were presented in Poland (Warsaw 1838–1839; Poznań 1845) and in Germany (Berlin 1845, 1847; Leipzig 1845, Dresden 1846).
William Smialek (1991, p. 81) claimed that the true historical predecessor of Dobrzyński’s operatic hero was Henry Morgan (ca. 1635–1688), a famous Welsh pirate. However, in an opera libretto, a given historical figure becomes a victim of a number of narrative conventions. That leads to some visible artistic deformations and infidelities to relevant historical sources.
Dobrzyński's opera libretto shares the narrative syntax with such genres as the Gothic novel, tyrant rescue operas (a term suggested by David Charlton 1992, pp. 181–183), and early examples of the popular theatrical genre of melodrama. Following Vladimir Propp’s narrative theory it would be right to say that in all these cases (literary work, opera, or spoken drama) we are always dealing with the same narrative sequence. Thus, according to Propp's character typology, Monbar could be simply recognized as “the villain” who struggles against the noble hero.

Written by James Burney in 1816.
Fourth Volume