British Colonial Realism in Africa: Inalienable Objects, Contested Domains (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture)

What role do objects play in realist narratives as they move between societies and their different systems of value as commodities, as charms, as gifts, as trophies, or as curses? This book explores how the struggle to represent objects in British colonial realism corresponded with historical struggles over the material world and its significance. 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 Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction: Reading Colonial Realism....Pages 1-28 Taking Objects for Origins: Victorian Ethnography and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness ....Pages 29-73 The Uncanny Object Lessons of Mary Kingsley and Edward Blyden....Pages 74-122 Realism and Realia in Colonial Southern Africa....Pages 123-174 Artful Tales and Indigenous Arts in Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm ....Pages 175-216 Coda....Pages 217-224 Back Matter....Pages 225-245