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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 investment that characterized colonial and postcolonial life in Africa. Reading works by authors 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.
| List of Illustrations | p. viii |
| Preface and Acknowledgments | p. ix |
| Introduction: Reading Colonial Realism | p. 1 |
| Taking Objects for Origins: Victorian Ethnography and Conrad's Heart of Darkness | p. 29 |
| Ethnographic Doubling | p. 35 |
| Of Trifles and Trade: Conrad's Ethnography of Colonialism | p. 45 |
| Authenticity on the Market, an Afterword | p. 62 |
| The Uncanny Object Lessons of Mary Kingsley and Edward Blyden | p. 74 |
| If Objects Could Speak, "many a wild story the handles of your table knives could tell" | p. 76 |
| Out of England: Objects and Others | p. 92 |
| Not "an object in the midst of other objects" | p. 104 |
| Realism and Realia in Colonial Southern Africa | p. 123 |
| Collecting Cape Colony Life | p. 124 |
| Specimens and Curiosities in Carey-Hobson's The Farm in the Karoo | p. 134 |
| Outside the Realist Collection: Reckless Generosity and Other Notions of Expenditure | p. 145 |
| Curses and Gifts in Anna Howarth's Karoo Novels | p. 153 |
| Artful Tales and Indigenous Arts in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm | p. 175 |
| A Portrait of the Artist as a Colonial South African | p. 180 |
| Schreiner's Grotesque Realism | p. 190 |
| Histories and "Bushman" Painters | p. 198 |
| Coda | p. 217 |
| Bibliography | p. 225 |
| Index | p. 237 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780230378001
ISBN-10: 0230378005
Series: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture
Audience:
Tertiary; University or College
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 264
Published: 5th June 2012
Dimensions (cm): 22.3 x 14.4
x 2.0
Weight (kg): 0.44
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