عنوان

The inscription of self and culture in British narratives of travel and exploration in Africa, 1850-1900

Number

TLets292847

Title Proper

The inscription of self and culture in British narratives of travel and exploration in Africa, 1850-1900

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Youngs, Timothy David

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Nottingham Polytechnic

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

1991

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

Nottingham Polytechnic

Text preceding or following the note

1991

Text of Note

This thesis exarranes several British narratives of travel andexploration in East and central Africa from 1850 to 1900. Itdraws upon recent ideas fran colonial discourse and ethnographiccriticism concerning the representation of people from othercuI tures . However, it brings to these approaches a morehistorical framework than they are usually given and a closerattention to literary structures and tropes.I argue that racial ideology changes ln response to, andreflects, changes in the material circumstances of the culturewhich the self inhabits. I further maintain that the literaryexpression of racial ideology must be considered in the lightof developments in literary style and structure more generally,which are, in turn, responses to social changes.Chapter I looks at a variety of travellers to Abyssinia andshows how conceptions of that country shift according topolitical and social phenomena in Britain. The chapter pivots onan ex~nation of the little-known 1867 military expeditionagainst Abyssinia. The movement I trace is from a late survivalof the romantic idea of the noble savage in 1853, through ahardening of attitudes with the military expedition, followed bya nostalgic and false attempt late in the century to recreate aromantic, but feudal view.Chapter II considers several travellers to East and CentralAfrica and, through close attention to their attitudes towardswriting and publishing, and toward the role of objects andcanoodi ties they take with them, suggests that a deep tmeaseabout their own social identity can be tmcovered. Africa andAfricans are regarded by the travellers ~n ways that reflecttheir own tensions and are written about by them in ways thatattempt to resolve these.Chapter III takes descriptions of African eating habits andargues that Britons' fascinated disgust at the lack of mediatingutensils, at the eating of raw meat, and at inrnediategratification, is a means of justifying to themselves theincreasing distance between producers and consumers in the secondhal f of the nineteenth century. Marmers assume rrore importancetoo as the lines between the social classes becane blurred. Thecomplex structures of capitalism mean that civilisation isincreasingly defined by its distance from nature. Africans eatingare seen by the West as nature at its rrost bestial. And it allowsthe Victorians to forget about the extent of food adulteration intheir towns.Chapters IV and V consider, respectively, the production andconsumption of narratives of Stanley's expedition to relieve ~nPasha. Those who have written about the expedition have failed toex~ne it in the context of late nineteenth-century art andpolitics, which both point to a division between language andexperience. The arguments about heroism and personal and nationalconduct must, I argue, be seen against this background. Myapproach presents reactions to the expedition in its culturalcontext, which previous carrnentators have failed to do. And Ioffer it as proof of my thesis that l.mages of Africa, of theother, change as British conditions change, but that the needto use the images for self-definition does not.My argument is supported by my methodology: aninterdisciplinary approach,readings with a knowledge ofwhich combines closecritical theory andtextualcolonialdiscourse theory, but also with historical knowledge and originalresearch in archives. I have offered new material and a way ofstudying both travel writing and the representation of othercultures.

Anthropology

Youngs, Timothy David

Nottingham Polytechnic

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y