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Zone of the Marvellous: In Search of the Antipodes
Imaginative and cerebral, this volume recounts the fantastic history of the antipodes—namely Australia and New Zealand—from the Western perspective over the course of the past five millennia. Tracing the fiction underlying the fact in the tales of, among others, Marco Polo, John Mandeville, and Thomas More, this remarkable compilation explores the imagination of travelers, writers, map-makers, charlatans, and rogues who dreamed of other worlds. Delving into the Australian character and the New Zealand psyche, this account also conveys an insightful glimpse into Western history.
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 22, 2025
An intellectual miscellany marred by its uncritical quoting of crackpots. Alarm bells ring in the introduction, when Edmond frames his book in Foucauldian terms. Thankfully the ensuing eight essays are more or less free of the great post-structuralist slaphead’s abstrusities, and the accounts of the antipodes as imagined in ancient and medieval times are decent summaries without offering much in the way of original thought. The same goes for the pieces on exploration; the potted biography of William Dampier made me want to learn more, but if you’ve read about him or the other great explorers already I doubt you’ll learn anything new here.
The last couple of essays are disappointing. Edmond inexplicably falls for an obvious folk-etymology (that the English word “beach” is derived “by means of a series of scribal misreadings” from the mythical land of Locach), spends a couple of pages expounding the ludicrous theories of Madame Blavatsky, and indulges the pseudoscientific marine archaeologist Graham Hancock’s fantasies of ancient sunken cities. The final piece spends 20 pages on the Antipodean painters Sidney Nolan and Colin McCahon and ten more on a handful of other artists that are at best tangential to, arguably irrelevant to, the book’s (admittedly never clearly defined) theme. 2.5 stars rounded down for the pseudoscience.
The last couple of essays are disappointing. Edmond inexplicably falls for an obvious folk-etymology (that the English word “beach” is derived “by means of a series of scribal misreadings” from the mythical land of Locach), spends a couple of pages expounding the ludicrous theories of Madame Blavatsky, and indulges the pseudoscientific marine archaeologist Graham Hancock’s fantasies of ancient sunken cities. The final piece spends 20 pages on the Antipodean painters Sidney Nolan and Colin McCahon and ten more on a handful of other artists that are at best tangential to, arguably irrelevant to, the book’s (admittedly never clearly defined) theme. 2.5 stars rounded down for the pseudoscience.
May 19, 2016
The Antipodes, that place across the world, has long a space of fantasy, of desire, of danger and of a promise of untold wealth. For many centuries, European scientists believed that there had to be a great Southern land to counterbalance the weight of the northern continents. For some, the promise/expectation of a great Southern land was the stimulus to exploration – Cook, Magellan, Tasman and many others were sent out, in part, to find that Southern continent. Alas, aside from a much smaller snow infested desert and a very large island – it did not exist.
Martin Edmond’s fabulous set of essays amount to no less than an intellectual history of this myth and its consequences, including what happened once its mythical status was demonstrated, spanning 5 millennia. The first two essays explore literary manifestations of the antipodes, of the zone of the marvellous – beginning with The Epic of Gilgamesh and Atlantis and spanning works as diverse as Herodotus, Thomas More’s Utopia and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville; with the exception of Herodotus, fictions all. These essays set the basis for two key tropes throughout the book; the first is the sense that even in Gilgamesh there is an expansive international flow of knowledge, ideas, stories and information, that while manifest in different ways are grounded in a material existence.
He then turns to ages of ‘exploration’, to that time when Europeans set out in small, often dangerously unstable boats, to find out what was out there – and they found people in the antipodean/marvellous zones they encountered. In many cases they found people who knew of the existence of others, not necessarily these particular others on their strange boats and with the unusual customs, but of the existence of Others; in many cases they were much more knowledgeable of those others than these European ‘explorers’ were of the people they encountered. This resulted in the fantastical notions of antipodean humans with heads below their shoulders, or with a single giant foot. Our myth of the ignorance of the antipodean ‘Other’ is in many respects an effect of a focus on the Pacific rather than the mainland or major islands of Asia in considering the extent of the zone of the marvellous. This discussion includes questions of surveying and claiming/naming of land, of fraught relations with the existing occupants of the antipodes – made noble in some places (New Zealand, Tahiti etc), deemed not to exist in other (Australia, most especially).
In ending he turns his attention to, first, those residual, fantastical ideas of what the existing antipodes might be – perhaps Atlantis, again, and the movement of sea levels over the last several hundred thousand years do point to areas now well submerged that were certainly once high-&-dry land. These fantasies are not just of land, but of people – that romanticisation of indigenous, of ‘spirituality’, of some mythical sense of autochthony that seems to pervade so many discussions of First Nations. In finishing, he looks at 20th century artistic representations, focusing on two Australian and two New Zealand artists, two working the mid-20th century, two still working. Here he opens up a discussion of the antipodes as represented from within, as a counter-point to the initial chapters representing the zone of the marvellous from without.
Across all 8 essays Edmond runs together common themes: of a dialogue between the inhabitants and the newcomers; of the notion of fantasy and the marvellous as imposed without much foundation other than pre-conceptions of the outsiders; of the persistence of views empirically no longer sustainable; of a discursive construction of the antipodes that claims them by calling (hailing, even) them into existence in very specific ways that tally with prevailing preconceptions and anticipations; if global flows of knowledge, including from beyond the known world. Throughout, there is a constant retention of a sense of dialogue, of a dialectic concurrently shaping, forming, determining and denying these antipodes as a place of marvelousness.
I read these as an antipodean; as one raised in the residue of the great Southern land but living in my antipodes; as a New Zealander, so antipodean, living and working in England, my post-colonial antipodes, and in doing so I read this with a specific, peculiar and unsettled outlook on the zone of the marvellous, because it is that zone that is the place that shaped and framed my views of the world. Edmond opens the book, in his introduction, with reflections on this otherness, of being out of place in that very place that claims us of them (we are, after all, the descendants of settler colonials) while at the same time defining us not-of-them, as antipodean. What’s more as an antipodean in my antipodes, in the place that defines my place as Other there is almost a sense conjured up by these essays of living in no-place, in u-topia – but that is a product of my (and many others) mobility.
The essays, and as a result the book, is a superb piece of intellectual history tracing the development, the manifold forms and the richly shaped dialogues around or persistence views of the antipodes, as God’s Own/Godzone country, as the Lucky Country, as a land of hope and opportunity – there is little else that could explain the number of times I am asked why I live in England when I could live in New Zealand other than a fantastical view of other, the antipodes as somewhere marvellous. Edmond’s style is lucid elegant and poetic, making it engaging, rich and evocative when he discusses the literary, the archive, the journal of exploration or the contemporary quasi-representational painting. As an exploration of the marvellous, this is itself quite marvellous.
Martin Edmond’s fabulous set of essays amount to no less than an intellectual history of this myth and its consequences, including what happened once its mythical status was demonstrated, spanning 5 millennia. The first two essays explore literary manifestations of the antipodes, of the zone of the marvellous – beginning with The Epic of Gilgamesh and Atlantis and spanning works as diverse as Herodotus, Thomas More’s Utopia and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville; with the exception of Herodotus, fictions all. These essays set the basis for two key tropes throughout the book; the first is the sense that even in Gilgamesh there is an expansive international flow of knowledge, ideas, stories and information, that while manifest in different ways are grounded in a material existence.
He then turns to ages of ‘exploration’, to that time when Europeans set out in small, often dangerously unstable boats, to find out what was out there – and they found people in the antipodean/marvellous zones they encountered. In many cases they found people who knew of the existence of others, not necessarily these particular others on their strange boats and with the unusual customs, but of the existence of Others; in many cases they were much more knowledgeable of those others than these European ‘explorers’ were of the people they encountered. This resulted in the fantastical notions of antipodean humans with heads below their shoulders, or with a single giant foot. Our myth of the ignorance of the antipodean ‘Other’ is in many respects an effect of a focus on the Pacific rather than the mainland or major islands of Asia in considering the extent of the zone of the marvellous. This discussion includes questions of surveying and claiming/naming of land, of fraught relations with the existing occupants of the antipodes – made noble in some places (New Zealand, Tahiti etc), deemed not to exist in other (Australia, most especially).
In ending he turns his attention to, first, those residual, fantastical ideas of what the existing antipodes might be – perhaps Atlantis, again, and the movement of sea levels over the last several hundred thousand years do point to areas now well submerged that were certainly once high-&-dry land. These fantasies are not just of land, but of people – that romanticisation of indigenous, of ‘spirituality’, of some mythical sense of autochthony that seems to pervade so many discussions of First Nations. In finishing, he looks at 20th century artistic representations, focusing on two Australian and two New Zealand artists, two working the mid-20th century, two still working. Here he opens up a discussion of the antipodes as represented from within, as a counter-point to the initial chapters representing the zone of the marvellous from without.
Across all 8 essays Edmond runs together common themes: of a dialogue between the inhabitants and the newcomers; of the notion of fantasy and the marvellous as imposed without much foundation other than pre-conceptions of the outsiders; of the persistence of views empirically no longer sustainable; of a discursive construction of the antipodes that claims them by calling (hailing, even) them into existence in very specific ways that tally with prevailing preconceptions and anticipations; if global flows of knowledge, including from beyond the known world. Throughout, there is a constant retention of a sense of dialogue, of a dialectic concurrently shaping, forming, determining and denying these antipodes as a place of marvelousness.
I read these as an antipodean; as one raised in the residue of the great Southern land but living in my antipodes; as a New Zealander, so antipodean, living and working in England, my post-colonial antipodes, and in doing so I read this with a specific, peculiar and unsettled outlook on the zone of the marvellous, because it is that zone that is the place that shaped and framed my views of the world. Edmond opens the book, in his introduction, with reflections on this otherness, of being out of place in that very place that claims us of them (we are, after all, the descendants of settler colonials) while at the same time defining us not-of-them, as antipodean. What’s more as an antipodean in my antipodes, in the place that defines my place as Other there is almost a sense conjured up by these essays of living in no-place, in u-topia – but that is a product of my (and many others) mobility.
The essays, and as a result the book, is a superb piece of intellectual history tracing the development, the manifold forms and the richly shaped dialogues around or persistence views of the antipodes, as God’s Own/Godzone country, as the Lucky Country, as a land of hope and opportunity – there is little else that could explain the number of times I am asked why I live in England when I could live in New Zealand other than a fantastical view of other, the antipodes as somewhere marvellous. Edmond’s style is lucid elegant and poetic, making it engaging, rich and evocative when he discusses the literary, the archive, the journal of exploration or the contemporary quasi-representational painting. As an exploration of the marvellous, this is itself quite marvellous.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews