Johann's Summary - "An Image of Africa"

Link

Please see the link above for Johann's summary of Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa."  The summary is a Word attachment, so you will need to open or download it.

By the way, below is a picture of a young Achebe with Langston Hughes.  It is from Hughes' 1962 visit to Lagos, Nigeria.

 

 

Study Guide for Midterm in EN 202 Summer 2010, pt. 1

Did you know that you can stay at the Casa Fitzcarraldo the next time that you are in Iquitos, Peru?  (The picture above is from this hotel's website.  The daughter of Walter Saxer, Fitzcarraldo's executive producer, owns and operates this hotel.)

On to our study guide!

On our first day of class, we watched the following videos on the DR Congo, the current name for the setting of Conrad's novel:

Today we watched the following videos.  The first is part one of Al Jazeera English's documentary on the DR Congo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d4dFYiIzK8

The next is the presentation on King Leopold II of Belgium:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qU5IIiVW-E

I had intended to show the following video from Burden of Dreams, a film about the making of Fitzcarraldo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQyQnXrLb0

On July 13 and 14, we watched Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982) with Klaus Kinski in the title role, Claudia Cardinale as his partner Molly, the Brazilian actor Jose Lewgoy as the robber baron Don Aquilino, and Huerequeque Enrique Bohorquez, a non-actor, as Huerequeque the cook.  Note that Herzog did *not* use CGI or models and that his actors pulled the boat up and down the mountain and into the river.

Here is the IMDB page for Fitzcarraldo:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083946/

Roger Ebert's 1982 review is here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19820101/REVIEWS/201010325/1023

Ebert revisited the movie in 2005:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050828/REVIEWS08/508280301

On Wednesday we discussed the differences between novels and films as genres.  Novels' characters have interiority, and we often get much more exposition and back story in a novel.  We also talked about the roundness and flatness of characters.  Films draw on visual and aural elements--but is a picture worth a thousand words?.  They are collaborative (and commercial) whereas novels are more individual.  (However, oddly enough, Jane Austen wrote all over her novels in her family's parlor and not in a private study.) 

The picture below is Werner Herzog at work on Fitzcarraldo as his native actors look on.  (How does Herzog depict these natives and their culture?  How does Fitzcarraldo treat the natives?)  Further below is a picture of the British author George Orwell at work alone.


On Thursday (7/15), we discussed Fitzcarraldo and the beginning of Heart of Darkness.  We went over Joseph Campbell's monomyth ("The Hero's Journey") as it pertains to both Herzog's film and the beginning of Conrad's novel.  See this link for the outline that we used:
http://orias.berkeley.edu/hero/JourneyStages.pdf  However, there are more detailed outlines, so feel free to refer to them if you write about the hero's journey for your paper or the subjective exam.  It is ironic that Campbell's monomyth applies to Fitzcarraldo almost as well as it applies to more commercial movies such as Star Wars or Mulan. 

The picture below is from Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth, his televised conversations with journalist Bill Moyers.


We also discussed the journey from the center to the margins.  This journey is especially important in thinking about colonialist and post-colonialist writing.  Note that, in Conrad's time, London was very much the center of empire whereas the Congo was quite marginalized.  Does Fitzcarraldo make the same kind of journey from the center to the margins that Marlow does? 

Also, Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" will be on the midterm:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kipling.html

I didn't know that this poem was inspired by the Spanish-American War.  This war heralded the U.S.' entry into imperialism as it took over several of Spain's colonies: the Phillippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, for example. 

We also discussed the impact of historical context.  Note that over eighty years separate Heart of Darkness and Fitzcarraldo.  These more than eighty years include both World Wars, independence for a very many former colonies, and the Civil Rights movement.  Then we can also look at cultural differences.  Conrad was a former Russian subject who chose to become a British citizen.  Herzog was born during WWII, grew up in West Germany, and now lives in Los Angeles (but is not an American citizen).  One might also call him a citizen of the world as his work transcends the category of German or American cinema.

Note that Heart of Darkness has a frame narration.  An unnamed Englishman narrates the frame story.  In this story, his friend Marlow tells about his journey on the Congo River to rescue Kurtz, an agent for the Belgian company that Marlow once worked for.  Can we trust the unnamed Englishman?  Who is he?  Can we trust Marlow? 

Below is a picture from Apocalypse Now.  Here Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando, the shaven-headed man) and Willard (Marlow's name in the film) are conversing.

On Monday (7/19), we continued our exploration of Heart of Darkness, using Joseph Campbell's monomyth, Chinua Achebe's "An Image of Africa," and Werner Herzog's comments on the jungle to help us get further. 

How does Marlow's story follow the hero's journey?  And, if it does, what is Marlow's elixir?  How does it not follow the hero's journey?  Is he a hero?  Would Campbell consider him to be a hero?  Or is he more of an anti-hero?

Below is Dr. Kenneth Wheeler's definition of an anti-hero:

ANTIHERO: A protagonist who is a non-hero or the antithesis of a traditional hero. While the traditional hero may be dashing, strong, brave, resourceful, or handsome, the antihero may be incompetent, unlucky, clumsy, dumb, ugly, or clownish. Examples here might include the senile protagonist of Cervantes' Don Quixote or the girlish knight Sir Thopas from Chaucer's "Sir Thopas." In the case of the Byronic and Miltonic antihero, the antihero is a romanticized but wicked character who defies authority, and becomes paradoxically ennobled by his peculiar rejection of virtue. In this sense, Milton presents Satan in Paradise Lost as an antihero in a sympathetic manner. The same is true of Heathcliffe in Emily Bronté's Wuthering Heights. Compare with the picaro {or "knave or rascal who is the protagonist in picaresque novels" or novels about a young man's misadventures}.

Below is Gustave Dore's illustration of Satan in Paradise Lost.  Dore was active during the 19th century.

We also began to look at Marlow's depiction of women, beginning with his aunt (one of his helpers) and moving onto Kurtz' African mistress and his European fiancee.  Why does Marlow depict these women (especially his aunt) the way he does?  Why does he take pains to say that women are removed from the "world" and that they should not run things?  Why does he lie to Kurtz' Intended (the fiancee) about her beloved's last words? 

Here are some pictures of the New Woman (1890s/1900s).  The first is from 1911 and was part of a paper published in ...Nineteenth Century Gender Studies.  See the link below for the paper itself:  http://ncgsjournal.com/issue32/roundtable.htm

The other pictures are earlier, dating from the 1890s.  Although we take for granted women's ability to work outside the home and to exercise, these activities were once radical!  Again, remember what I said about the corset, which physically deformed and confined women.

 

We then examined some passages from Heart of Darkness, using Achebe's essay and Herzog's comments to find the effects of racism and the jungle.  Could Herzog's comments be in and of themselves racist or imperialist?  How might Marlow's fireman look from another perspective?  (The picture below is from Mother Jones and depicts Congolese "dandies.")

 

Note the effect that work has on both Marlow and his subordinates.  (You may also want to see what he says about the Europeans and their attitude towards work.)

 I'll conclude here with notes from Tuesday (7/20) since we finished up Heart of Darkness and we will be beginning Things Fall Apart on Wednesday (7/21).

At the beginning (or near beginning of class), Michelle gave her presentation on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories (i.e., The Hound of the Baskervilles) *and* The Crime of the Congo, an expose of Belgian (mis)rule.  Unlike Conrad, ACD was a very prolific, popular writer.  As Michelle pointed out, he wrote not only the Sherlock Holmes stories but also science fiction, romances, and non-fiction.  He trained as a physician and went to Africa as a ship's doctor, but he chose to write instead of practice medicine after his return to Great Britain.  ACD wrote The Crime of the Congo in 1909 after both Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad turned the assignment down.  Not only did ACD write this book but he also publicized it, meeting with world leaders and lecturing on it to the public.

Below is his portrait from 1897.

I will be posting Michelle's PowerPoint as soon as I am able to.  In the meantime, here is a link to the site where The Crime of the Congo is posted.

http://www.kongo-kinshasa.de/dokumente/lekture/crime_of_congo.pdf

We finished up our discussion of Heart of Darkness.  We explored whether or not Marlow had changed over the course of his story.  Of course, one could also think about whether or not he had changed since the events of the story.  Had he realized certain things as he brooded over what had happened in the Congo?  We also looked at whether or not Kurtz had affected him and why his responses to him swung wildly.  We briefly talked about Marlow's response to the young Russian's hero worship of Kurtz.  (Later we saw Dennis Hopper's performance in Apocalypse Now.)  We concluded by comparing Kurtz' mistress and his fiancee.



Then we watched the following clips from Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's transformation of Conrad's novel about the Congo into a film about Vietnam...or one that was Vietnam.

Marlow's meeting with the Army brass follows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iw1KobfPwk&feature=related

Next is a link to Dennis Hopper's scenes.  He plays an American photojournalist, and this person is Coppola's equivalent of Conrad's young Russian. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGKSuDleYVU

You may also want to look at these other scenes:

I like how Willard (Marlow's name in the film) states that he is waiting for a mission.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzM4D2_uOP0&feature=related


Here is a link to the infamous Ride of the Valkyries.  Robert Duvall plays Kilgore, a colonel who is relatively unscathed by the war.  Perhaps he is Coppola's equivalent of the Accountant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHjWDCX1Bdw

These are scenes from the boat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kT8rTsaHI4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cueJbgGa5-Y


Finally, see this link for scenes with Marlon Brando's Kurtz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BqloFdNq2Y

Reading Heart of Darkness 21 Years Later

The picture above is of a Polish translation of Heart of Darkness although the translation is not one of the ones mentioned by Ewa Kujawska-Lis in her comparison of translations from English to Polish.  (Polish was Joseph Conrad's first language.)

To begin with, I'd like to link to my review of Reading Heart of Darkness, a book that juxtaposes five ways of reading this classic novel. 

Link

Interestingly, that twenty-plus year old book did not include Chinua Achebe's critical reading.  Although I discuss it elsewhere, here is a link to Achebe's "An Image of Africa":
http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html

Note that Achebe is one of the founders of modern African literature.  His first novel Things Fall Apart is one of our readings, and it is probably the first modern African novel that everyone reads.

In "An Image of Africa," Achebe fiercely criticizes Conrad for relying on racist stereotypes of Africa and Africans as well as working to perpetuate these stereotypes in his Heart of Darkness.  Furthermore, Achebe maintains that, for the most part, Conrad refuses to let Africans speak in his novella.  Then, he notes that when they are allowed to, their few words confirm European prejudice.  He also criticizes readers for the degree of prejudice that has allowed them to gloss over Conrad's depiction of Africa and Africans.  Achebe particularly censures readers who gloss over Africa, regarding the continent as " merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz."  For Achebe, Conrad's novel is especially dangerous because it is so central to our conception of literature in English. 

And it is so false.

Indeed, the picture below is an 17th-century engraving of a procession through Benin City, the capital of the Edo kingdom in what is now Nigeria.

Below is a picture of a bronze bowl dating from the ninth or tenth century CE.  (The bowl is from the Igbo, another group or, as Achebe states, "nation," in Nigeria.)

British author Caryl Phillips interviewed Achebe in 2003.  Here, in this article from the Guardian, Achebe expands on his criticism of Conrad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/feb/22/classics.chinuaachebe

Now I'd like to go back to Ewa Kujawska-Lis' "Turning Heart of Darkness into a Racist Text:

A Comparison of Two Polish Translations," an article that appeared in the Summer 2008 Conradiana.  Although Heart of Darkness was written in English, it is extremely interesting to see how the novel would have been translated into the author's first language.  Kujawska-Lis compares two translations.  The first was by Aniela Zagorska, Conrad's cousin whose translation appeared in 1930, shortly after his death.  The cover pictured right above is of Ms. Zagorska's translation, and Kujawska-Lis notes that her text continues to be used in schools.  The second translation is, of course, more recent.  It is Ireneusz Socha's version from 2004, one of several that have appeared in the last twenty years.  Kujawska-Lis has chosen it as it is the most recent version.  Unfortunately, I cannot seem to find a cover for this version although this may be it.


Kujawska-Lis does mention the challenges of translation, specifically the translator's inevitable fingerprints on the text.  For the most part, she focuses on how racial terms and descriptions of Africa and Africans are translated into Polish.  As Conrad's first language was Polish, she argues that Zagorska's translation may provide a window on Conrad's attitude towards race.  Yet, being the author's cousin and friend, she also would have had an interest in representing him and his work favorably.  Kujawska-Lis suggests that Zagorska recognized the harshness of the English terms that her cousin used to describe Africans.  Socha's translation, on the other hand, reflects current readings of Conrad's work, particularly Achebe's, and perhaps even a reaction towards Conrad's current status in Poland.  (Ironically, during his lifetime, Conrad was criticized for "abandoning" Poland to live in England and write in English.)  More recently, she observes, Polish readers view Conrad as a moralist and a "national treasure" whose characters inspired readers during WWII.

Overall, Kujawska-Lis describes Zagorska's tendencies as "humanizing" and Socha's as "dehumanizing."  For example, the earlier translator's word choices emphasize the humanity of the Africans whereas the later translator's choices liken them to animals.  She appears to consider Zagorska's choices to be more deliberate and Socha's to be more careless even though his version has a clear ideological bias. 

Kujawska-Lis also criticizes Achebe for an exaggerated reading of Conrad.  However, as she also indicates in her article, her perspective is quite different from his, and she recognizes that she is writing about Conrad's impact on a specific audience, namely Polish readers who are oriented towards Polish history.

For more information about Conrad's multilingualism, see this article by Dr. Alicia Pousada of the University of Puerto Rico:

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~apousada/id4.html

Heart of Darkness (Cultural Background)

As it turns out, there are more than two hundred ethnic groups or tribes in the DR Congo, so this entry will do much less than scratch the surface.  However, I thought that this topic would complement today's class and Chinua Achebe's lecture nicely.

Let's begin with a link to historian John Henrik Clarke's article on the ethnic groups *before* colonization:

http://www.africawithin.com/clarke/LumumbaCongo.html

The Encyclopedia of the Nations has a brief overview of the Congo's ethnic makeup.

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Congo-Republic-of-the-ROC-ETHNIC-GROUPS.html

This index from Wikipedia is simply a list, but it is a fairly specific list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethnic_groups_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo



Let's begin with a few links about the Kongo (or Bakongo) after whom the region was named.  The Kongo Kingdom extended from what is now the DR Congo to what is now Angola.

http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/people/kongo.html

http://countrystudies.us/angola/5.htm

This site includes more specific information about their art.

http://www.zyama.com/kongo/pics..htm

The figure pictured above is a power figure.  For more information, see this article:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/chapters/kml/KME5.html

This article concerns the Kongo's original religion:

http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/sub/kongo.html

After 1491, the Kongo were Christian.  The crucifix below is in New York's Met Museum.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/acko/hd_acko.htm




The DR Congo has a number of pygmy ethnic groups such as the Mbuti and the Mbenga.  They may be the original inhabitants of this region.  Blogger Rashid Faridi has written up a fairly comprehensive overview of these groups.  The picture above is of a Ba Aka family.

http://rashidfaridi.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/pygmiesafrican-peoples-of-the-rainforest/

For more information about the Ba Aka, see this site:

http://tiki.oneworld.net/features/survival/survival_2_ba-aka.html

http://www.baka.co.uk/baka/

Another group is the Efe:

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2003/11/26/entertainment/art/11_25_0312_31_09.txt

National Geographic has recently published an article on the Mbuti.  The picture below is not from that article but from Yale University's Tropical Resources Institute.  One of its students worked on a project with the Mbuti.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0509/feature5/

For more information about Ellen Brown's project, see this link:

http://www.yale.edu/tri/fellows2004/Africa.html#ellenbrown

Not suprisingly, the Mbuti are known for the bark cloth that they make:

http://www.indigoarts.com/gallery_africanart_textl7.html

Or you may prefer music:

http://www.tower.com/mbuti-pygmies-ituri-rainforest-various-artists-cd/wapi/106408965

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW2lv7_2KQg

However, the pygmies have been victims of outrageous cruelty recently:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2933524.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3869489.stm

To add insult to injury, logging companies have devastated the rainforests where the pygmies live.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/congos-pygmies-take-on-world-bank-to-save-rainforest-from-loggers-396903.html



I'll move on to a little bit about the Chokwe:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/people/Chokwe.html

http://www.zyama.com/chokwe/index.htm

http://www.rebirth.co.za/chokwe_mask_history.htm

Below is an image of one of their masks.  This was used at a king's coronation.

The Chokwe are also known for their chairs and stools:




I'll conclude with some information about the Kuba Kingdom.  The picture above is of a Bwoom mask from that group.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kuba/hd_kuba.htm

These links contain information about this kingdom's art:

http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/faculty/Miller%20Kuba/Kuba%20Site/kuba_home.html
http://www.zyama.com/kuba/pics..htm


http://www.randafricanart.com/kuba_Bwoom.html

http://www.marlamallett.com/kuba.htm

Below is a picture of the Kuba's raffia cloth:



There is so much more that I could post, but I think that I will stop here for now. 

How does this information add to your understanding of Heart of Darkness?

What is Colonialism?

It's easy to confuse orientalism and colonialism (and imperialism), so I thought that I would complement my entry on orientalism with an entry on colonialism. 

By the way, the picture above is a still from the 1984 film A Passage to India, an adaptation of the British writer EM Forster's novel.  This novel is set during the time when India was a British colony struggling to become independent.  In the scene pictured above, the Englishwoman Adela Quested (the sometime fiancee of colonial civil servant Ronnie Heaslop) is traveling to the Malabar Caves.  She is riding with Dr. Aziz; later she will falsely claim that he tried to rape her in the cave.  This will result in a trial and Dr. Aziz's humilation.  Ironically, Adela was initially very sympathetic towards India and its people.  For more information about this movie and a clip from it, see this link:

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/37349/A-Passage-to-India/overview


To distinguish among the three terms...orientalism, imperialism, and colonialism....

Orientalism (that is, the meaning that literary critic Edward Said has popularized) is more about how Westerners interpret the East.  In other words, orientalism is the belief that Westerners are better able to interpret the East and Easterners and that Easterners cannot interpret or represent themselves on their own.  Orientalism leads to Westerners' interpreting the Other to suit themselves. 


Imperialism and colonialism, on the other hand, are political and economic terms.  The former, imperialism, refers to one country's political, economic, and sometimes cultural domination over another.  Colonialism, the latter, refers to the practice of settling a country as the British settled in America (before we became independent), India, or their territories in Africa.  However, the British were not the only colonizers.  The Romans, the French, and the Spanish, to name three nationalities, colonized various regions.  For more information about this distinction, see this link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/colonialism/

This timeline from the University of Iowa will give you a broad overview of how many nations were involved in colonialism:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~c016003d/Resources/Imperialismtimeline.htm

Or you may prefer these statistics from Mt. Holyoke:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/colonies.htm

Otherwise, the timelines can be fairly overwhelming.  Below is one professor's timelines that cover the British Raj and India's struggle for independence:

http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum210/tml/indiatml/indiatml3.htm

http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum210/tml/indiatml/indiatml4.htm

Here is the BBC's timeline for Africa.  Note that it begins in prehistoric times.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1624_story_of_africa/page96.shtml

Below is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's timeline on the Guinea Coast, an area that includes some of Nigeria.  It covers arts and culture as well as politics and economics, but it seems to be the most detailed and authoritative timeline that I've seen:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/10/sfg/ht10sfg.htm

Finally, here is a timeline on the Congo that covers both the colonial era and independence:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/hhanson/241/congotimeline.html

The BBC's timeline is more detailed:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1072684.stm

Even if we focus on the settings of Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart, ignoring every other former colony, there is still much to investigate on this topic.  I will conclude by making one more distinction.  First published in 1898 (in serialized form), Heart of Darkness is a colonial novel since Conrad wrote it at a time when Belgium still occupied the Congo and Britain had a considerable empire.  Conrad himself lived in the Congo for a very short period.  Things Fall Apart, on the other hand, is a post-colonial novel even though Achebe wrote it in 1958, just *before* Nigeria became independent.  Achebe is from the colony that became Nigeria, and even though the novel is set in the 1890s, he depicts Okonkwo from the perspective of a member of his ethnic group (Igbo).

For more information about post-colonialism, see this link:

http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Intro.html

As this article's author states and the example of Things Fall Apart demonstrates, we use the term post-colonial a little more loosely than one would imagine.  However, it is still a useful term, and a distinction between Conrad's perspective and Achebe's must be made and maintained.

Study Guide for the Midterm (part 1)

These are the works that will be on the midterm:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Lady Mary Wortley Montague's Turkish Embassy Letters (to Alexander Pope, Miss Sarah Chiswell, and the Countess of Mar [Lady Mary's sister])

excerpts from Evliya Celebi's Book of Travels (the whole is ten volumes)

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (We also discussed his "An Image of Africa" and Caryl Phillips' interview.)

Oroonoko by Aphra Behn

Candide by Voltaire

excerpts from Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

excerpts from Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

"Stale Mates" by Zhang Ailing or Eileen Chang

Raise the Red Lantern, dir. Zhang Yimou

excerpts from Xueqin Cao 's The Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber


The exam will be in two parts.  The first is the subjective exam (60 pts.).  This will be a take home essay.  The second is the objective exam (40 pts.).  I will ask you to fill in the blanks, answer multiple choice questions, and give short answers.   For the most part, the questions will be cover what we discuss in class.  I may ask you to list three to five things that you learned from reading this blog. 

Topics discussed for each work:

Heart of Darkness (1899, 1902)-- between 19th & 20th century, imperialism, history of Congo/DR Congo, frame narrative, Marlow as narrator, Marlow as hero/Kurtz as hero, hero's journey, Marlow & women, Marlow & Africans, Marlow & Europeans who are not English, is Marlow Conrad?/is Conrad Marlow?, Apocalypse Now, An Image of Africa (Achebe's response), Conrad's decision to write in English

Turkish Embassy Letters (written 1716-1718, published 1763) -- Lady Mary's sense of audience, her perspective on the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, orientalism, her correspondents, her visit with the wife of the Grand Vizier and then with the wife of the Kabya "the difference between an old devote and a young beauty," letters published *after* Lady Mary's death & even then they were edited, genre of lifewriting



Book of Travels -- ten volume work, Celebi traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire (Turkey, Albania, today's Iraq, Egypt), in the section we read he visits the site of a famous battle and advises the Caliph on how to preserve a ???'s gravesite from desecration, how does Celebi portray the land & people?

Things Fall Apart (1958) -- one of the first modern African novels but not the first (Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard was published in 1946.), Achebe's depiction of 19th c. Igbo/Ibo society, Okonkwo-'s conflict with his son Nwoye and its outcome, impact of Christianity & British rule, Okonkwo & his wives, the society's attitude towards war, is Okonkwo at odds with his own village (Umofia)?, his conflict with his father, proverbs, what does Umofia value?, Okonkwo's relationship with Ikemefuna, what falls apart in the novel?, is Okonkwo a hero?  Is he a tragic hero?, roles of tradition & ritual, is Okonkwo flexible?  is his village?  why is flexibility important and how does it affect the outcome?, feel free to refer to "An Image of Africa" and interviews with Achebe

What is Orientalism?

Orientalism is an important concept to keep in mind as we start EN 202 because the West's political & cultural power makes it easy to see non-Western literature as exotic and less important than Western literature.  Since this semester we are reading Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters from the Ottoman Empire *and* excerpts from Evliya Celebi's The Book of Travels, this concept is especially important since Edward Said's book focuses on this part of the world more than it focuses on Africa.  So I thought I would put up some links about it while I have a little more time. 

Nowadays when we talk about Orientalism in literary studies we are referring to Edward Said's definition of this term: Orientalism as a method of defining the Middle East (and the rest of Asia) as an object of study by Westerners.  However, as Danielle Sered notes in a web page on Orientalism, this term was used long before Said.  Then its meaning was a lot less controversial.

 http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Orientalism.html

Prof. Allen Carey-Webb's page at the University of Western Michigan provides more detailed information about the concept of Orientalism, the reception of Said's ideas, and Said himself.

http://www.wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/orientalism.htm

Interestingly, his students have also written about some of the works that we'll be reading.  Here is Michael Omo's page on Heart of Darkness: 

http://www.wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/heartofdarkness.html

Theresa Johnson wrote about Things Fall Apart:

http://www.wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/thingsfallapart.html

OK, I'm starting to go off track, but here is Vicki L. Whisler's page on Oroonoko:

http://www.wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/oroonoko.html

Said does mention Heart of Darkness and other works by Conrad, but his emphasis is on the Middle East as it has been scrutinized and defined by Westerners.  Nevertheless, because Said has helped us realize how politicized literature and literary studies are and his book is a key text in post-colonial studies, he has affected how we read Heart of Darkness et al.  We cannot read it as naively as we might have before Said published Orientalism (1978). 

Of course, neither should we read Orientalism naively.  FYI, here are some reviews by critics of Said:

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/enough-said-3743

The print on this article is small, but this site is more accessible than Salon is nowadays:

http://www.ictal.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1328

 

How do you interpret the way that the authors of these web sites use the term Orientalist or Oriental?

http://www.orientalist-art.org.uk/

http://www.orientalistart.net/index.html

http://www.arabartgallery.com/orient1.htm

Here is a painting by Kamil Aslanger, a contemporary Turkish artist who calls himself an Orientalist artist.  I tried to go to his website, but it is entirely in Turkish!  It looks and sounds beautiful, though.

Reading Heart of Darkness (Historical Background)

This evening I'd like to put together a quick entry on the history of and current events in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo and the setting of Heart of Darkness).  I've posted a current map from Lonely Planet above; here is a historical map from the 19th century.  (Conrad worked in the Congo around 1890.)  I was able to find a map from around that time!  It is a little oversize, but look for the "Congo Free State."

 

More importantly, here are some links about the history of the DR Congo.

The US State Department's site is very comprehensive.  Scroll down the page to find historical information that predates the arrival of Europeans.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2823.htm

On the other hand, the BBC's historical background is more readable:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1120825.stm

Historian John Henrik Clarke has written this article about the history of the Congo *before* colonialization:

http://www.africawithin.com/clarke/LumumbaCongo.html

The University of Pennsylvania's African Studies Center brings together a number of disparate but relevant sites on the DR Congo:

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Country_Specific/Zaire.html

For a change of pace, here is Lonely Planet's information about the DR Congo:

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/democratic-republic-of-congo

Here is a picture of Kinshasa, the nation's largest city.

This picture of a village is also from the BBC:

 

As is this collage of scenes from the recent elections:

I do want to include some more detailed historical background about Belgium's occupation or colonization of what is now the DR Congo.  The first article is from Yale's Genocide Studies Program:

http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/belgian_congo/index.html

Here are history professor Wallace Mills' notes on this topic:

http://husky1.stmarys.ca/~wmills/course317/5Belgian_Policies.html

CNN's website from 1997 provides useful information about what happened after the DR Congo (then Zaire) became independent in 1960.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9704/02/zaire.essay/

Howard W. French's 1997 article from the NY Times focuses on Mobutu Seso Seke, Zaire's dictator from 1965 to 1997:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E6D61338F934A25756C0A961958260

A Wikipedia entry on Mobutu is more blunt, stating that "his name [was] synonymous with kleptocracy [rule by theft] in Africa" (par. 1).

This BBC profile is about the DR Congo's next ruler, Laurent Kabila, who was assassinated in 2001:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1121068.stm

Currently, his son Joseph is the president, having won the election in 2006.

Here are some more recent articles about the country and its current situation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7824870.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7850086.stm

How might your knowledge of history and current events affect your understanding of Heart of Darkness -- and Achebe's criticism of this work?