This image is of a painting by John Everett Millais, titled "The Boyhood of Raleigh", and which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1871. Its afterlife stretches to a present where its significance as an epitome of the culture of heroic imperialism in late Victorian Britain has been overlaid by political and cultural references in newspaper cartoons. The picture has also appeared in the context of recent explorations of postcolonialism.
The painting depicts the young, wide-eyed Walter Raleigh and his brother sitting on the beach by the Devonshire coast at Budleigh Salterton. He is listening to a story of life on the seas, told by an experienced sailor who points out to the horizon.
Millais' narrative framework for the painting included some influence from the imperial narratives found in an essay written by James Anthony Froude on England's Forgotten Worthies, which described the lives of Elizabethan seafarers. It was also probably influenced by a contemporaneous biography of Raleigh, which imagined his experiences listening to old sailors as a boy.
Millais travelled to Budleigh Salterton to paint in the location because of connections to Raleigh's birthplace and early life at Hayes Barton, East Budleigh, Devon. Millais' sons Everett and George modelled for the boys. The sailor was a professional model.
Millais' friend and biographer, the critic Marion Spielmann, suggested that the "old sailor" was intended to be Genoese. He also argues that the sailor is pointing south towards the "Spanish main".
Q. So, what is a Genoese "old salt" doing in Buddleigh Salterton, "spinning yarns" to two boys, "of the manor/manner born", and on this English shore?
A. Well, it's a picture of listeners, or interpreters, to a story and a storyteller, and anything can happen in a story! However, considering the purpose of this particular story will provide leads to other narratives and explanations. The Genoese sailor is pointing to the horizon, telling stories about happenings elsewhere.
This pointing finger resonates with the original LODE project concept.
A ‘great circle’, a ring around a globe shaped earth.
A line runs through here, Liverpool, and here, Hull!
And here, (?) and here, (?) too!
Where does it point?
LODE is a performance of signs. The unloading and loading of signs as if they were an extremely delicate cargo.
Signs that evoke the presence of that which is elsewhere in space and time.
Q. Where is the Genoese mariner/storyteller pointing? The Spanish main?
A. Yes. And a lot more besides.
A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie
— Umberto Eco
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.Trattato di semiotica generale (1975); [A Theory of Semiotics] (1976)
Synecdoche: from Greek συνεκδοχή, lit. "simultaneous understanding", a kind of connotation in which a part is used for the whole, e.g. "hand" for "sailor".
The planet Earth is a sphere
Millais' yarn spinner points to places beyond the horizon telling stories of the Spanish main, an horizon of a world that is "round". Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus popularized the idea that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because many Catholic theologians insisted that the Earth was flat. In fact, nearly all those educated in Europe and the Mediterranean and Islamic world, had understood, at least since the time of Aristotle, that the Earth is spherical.
The sphericity of the Earth is also accounted for in the work of Ptolemy, on which medieval astronomy was largely based. Christian writers whose works clearly reflect the conviction that the Earth is spherical include Saint Bede the Venerable in his Reckoning of Time, written around AD 723.
A "global" planet, as in "sphere"!
Flat? or fiction?
The proposal made in 1991 for the LODE project of 1992 was a response to, and reflection of the Bluecoat, Liverpool and Hull Time Based Arts Performance Commission, that was primarily intended to celebrate the maritime histories of Liverpool and Hull. However, the LODE project chose to include in its context the then upcoming 500th year anniversary in 1992 of the voyage that led to the discovery of already inhabited lands, later described as either a New Spain, the Spanish main, the New World, or the Americas. This was an entirely European projection of power and exploitation, following the navigational and exploratory enterprise that Columbus had instigated. From the standpoint of a European centred narrative this has been called The Age of Discovery.
In 1993, Noam Chomsky published his book:
The Conquest Continues.
The naming of the Americas
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round . . .
"All people of the world are humans"
Slavery, dispossession, racism, slavery!
