著者

ウォレン ニコラス W.

出版者

福岡国際大学・福岡女子短期大学

雑誌

福岡女子短大紀要 (ISSN:02860546)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.59, pp.1-25, 2001-02-16

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The present paper sets out the results of a close reading of William Bligh's first published account (1790) of the mutiny the previous year aboard HMS Bounty and of his subsequent hazardous voyage with seventeen^1 men in a small open boat from the Tonga Islands some 3,900 miles via northeastern Australia to Dutch Timor. First, this study is placed in the context of the current worldwide project to revise the Oxford English Dictionary and to feed research into the ongoing publication of OED Online (launched in March 2000), here with particular emphasis on antedating. The study is then placed in a historical context with a synopsis of events leading to and ensuing from the mutiny, and the value of Bligh's Narrative as a source of lexical evidence is also discussed. In the second section of the paper, the main outcome of the present research is set out : some 40 antedatings of OED items are presented, with quotations, and discussed individually. The third section investigates postdatings based on items in Bligh's Voyage to the South Sea (1792). Miscellaneous items beyond the scope of this paper are briefly alluded to. The study concludes with a general assessment of the significance of this field of research.