British Colonial Realism in Africa [electronic resource] : Inalienable Objects, Contested Domains /
Spillman, Deborah Shapple.author.
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.
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Contents; List of Illustrations; Preface and Acknowledgments; Introduction: Reading Colonial Realism; 1 Taking Objects for Origins: Victorian Ethnography and Conrad's Heart of Darkness; 1 Ethnographic Doubling; 2 Of Trifles and Trade: Conrad's Ethnography of Colonialism; 3 Authenticity on the Market, an Afterword; 2 The Uncanny Object Lessons of Mary Kingsley and Edward Blyden; 1 If Objects Could Speak, ""many a wild story the handles of your table knives could tell""; 2 Out of England: Objects and Others; 3 Not ""an object in the midst of other objects""
3 Realism and Realia in Colonial Southern Africa1 Collecting Cape Colony Life; 2 Specimens and Curiosities in Carey-Hobson's The Farm in the Karoo; 3 Outside the Realist Collection: Reckless Generosity and Other Notions of Expenditure; 4 Curses and Gifts in Anna Howarth's Karoo Novels; 4 Artful Tales and Indigenous Arts in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm; 1 A Portrait of the Artist as a Colonial South African; 2 Schreiner's Grotesque Realism; 3 Histories and ""Bushman"" Painters; Coda; Bibliography; Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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.
Literature, Modern-19th century.
Literature-Philosophy.
British literature.
African literature.
Ethnology.
Culture-Study and teaching.
Nineteenth-Century Literature.
Literary Theory.
British and Irish Literature.
African Literature.
Cultural Anthropology.
Cultural Theory.