How does Robert Louis Stevenson’s engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?
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Connects Stevenson’s Scottish and Pacific periods through unexplored religious contexts
Interprets Stevenson’s writing within Pacific cultural and historical frameworks
Analyses neglected and unpublished work on mission work and evangelization
Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific Islands re-orients the intellectual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by presenting him in the distinctive cultural environment of the Pacific. The book argues that Stevenson was religiously literate within a Scottish Presbyterian tradition and therefore well placed to grasp with subtlety the breadth and dynamics of a Christianized Pacific culture. It considers his legacy with respect to issues of indigenous sovereignty and agency and positions him within an important and wide-ranging modern debate about inculturation, defined as the emergence of Christianity from within a particular culture rather than imposed on it from outside. Through this study of a major Scottish writer, the book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship.
This is a book of startling breadth and originality. Ratnapalan has not simply made a major contribution to Stevenson studies; he has also brought scholarly analysis of the Presbyterian literary culture of late nineteenth-century Scotland into a surprisingly fruitful engagement with the modern anthropology of Pacific Christianity.
L. Michael Ratnapalan is Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. He has published widely on modern intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on Britain’s interactions with the wider world.
