The Captains: Between Myth and Legend, Article and Anecdote
The Captains: Between Myth and Legend, Article and Anecdote
This chapter builds upon Ray Cashman’s work on character anecdotes at wakes in Northern Island, and starts by defining the term for this study in relationship to both the Big Stories covered in the previous chapter and the concepts of “legend” and “personal experience narrative (PEN).” In addition to providing a history of passing the leadership role between generations, specific character anecdotes are used to develop individual pictures of the captains, reflecting both personalities, biographies, and historical contexts. Themes arise that not only differentiate the captains, but also highlight tradition and change in the captain’s role and relationships to the Big Stories: authority within and about the fishery; stubbornness, commitment, stability; gentleness; spirituality. Discussion includes crew members’ and others’ views of captains as models of positive behaviour, who are heroic in the sense that they are both admirable and very human.
Keywords: character anecdote, leadership role, personality, captain, spirituality
University Press of Mississippi requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.