British colonial realism in Africa: inalienable objects, contested domains

How are objects central to the formation of individuals, their communities, and their liberties? What role do objects play as they move between societies and their different systems of value as commodities, as charms, as gifts, as trophies, or as curses? Nineteenth-century British authors attempting to transport narrative realism to the colonies confronted such questions directly and indirectly as they struggled to represent competing forms of material investmentthat characterized colonial and postcolonial life in Africa. Reading works byauthors from Joseph Conrad and Mary Kingsley to Anna Howarth and Olive Schreiner against nineteenth-century African essays, folklore, visual arts, and recorded testimonies, this new study considers how conflicts over the material world impacted literary realism in colonial Africa. These conflicts highlight tensions between Victorian and African perceptions of objects and practices of exchange, while directing our attention toward alternate histories and stories yet to be told. INDICE: List of Illustrations.Preface.Introduction: Reading Colonial Realism.Taking Objects for Origins: Victorian Ethnography and Heart of Darkness.TheUncanny Object Lessons of Mary Kingsley and Edward Blyden.Realism and Realia in Colonial Southern Africa.Artful Tales and Indigenous Arts in The Story of an African Farm.Coda.Notes.Bibliography.Index.

• ISBN: 978-0-230-37800-1
• Editorial: Palgrave Macmillan
• Encuadernacion: Cartoné
• Páginas: 256
• Fecha Publicación: 13/04/2012
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Desconocido