Vital Signs: Writing and Tattoo from Herman Melville to Sia Figiel

FAIN: FT-54007-06

Juniper L. Ellis
Loyola University Maryland (Baltimore, MD 21210-2601)

With the help of an NEH summer grant, I propose to pursue research to enhance my book manuscript on literary presentations of tatau, the Pacific Islands art form that creates the English word tattoo. Past Fulbright grants in New Zealand and Germany have allowed me to discover accounts of Pacific tattoo by English- and German-speaking travelers; the Bibliotheque Nationale de France holds corresponding material for French Polynesia. Tattoos from these territories, especially the Marquesas Islands and Tahiti, are important to works by writers including Herman Melville and Jean Baptiste Cabris (or Joseph Kabris), famed as Le Tatoué.

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