Lady Mary, Celebi, and the Ottoman Empire (part 2)

While I'm online, I thought I'd post a little bit of information about Lady Mary Wortley Montague and Evliya Celebi, our authors.  The picture above is Lady Mary in "Turkish costume."  I found it at the University of North Texas' exhibit on women writers.  This exhibit also included the following concise biography of Lady Mary:

http://www.library.unt.edu/rarebooks/exhibits/women/17th.htm#Lady%20Mary%20Wortley%20Montagu

This picture of a cover of a recent biography is probably a little more colorful!  Lady Mary, by the way, is particularly known for her early adoption of immunization.


Luminarium.org's biography is more extensive than the University of North Texas'.

http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/montagu/marybio.htm

This site also has links to Lady Mary's works in various genres:

http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/montagu/marybib.htm

Britain's Twickenham Museum also has information about Lady Mary in the context of her relationship with Alexander Pope:

http://www.twickenham-museum.org.uk/detail.asp?ContentID=180

For a little more information about Pope, here is the same museum's page on him:

http://www.twickenham-museum.org.uk/detail.asp?ContentID=19

Below is a picture of the Ottoman author Evliya Celebi:

Here is a link to a biography of Celebi:

http://www.mymerhaba.com/Evliya-%C3%87elebi-Traveler-in-Turkey-138.html

Among the places that Celebi visited was Gjirokastra, Albania:

http://www.gjirokastra.org/sub_links/help_save/help_visit_evliya_celebi.html

Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism has posted Celebi's description of Van Castle in the city of Van:

http://www.kultur.gov.tr/EN/BelgeGoster.aspx?17A16AE30572D313E603BF9486D4371D58DCB41B038C3F0E



Here is more information about Celebi's travels and his writing:

http://www.sabanciuniv.edu/ssbf/evliyacelebi/eng/?rota/rota.html

http://www.kent.ac.uk/english/evliya/seyahatname.html

Lady Mary, Celebi, & the Ottoman Empire (part 1)

En 202 could also be called "The Age of Empire and After."  Heart of Darkness, of course, is very much about Empire, and our upcoming reading Things Fall Apart was written as the former colonies in Africa were becoming independent.  With Friday's reading (the letters of British satirist & literati Lady Mary Wortley Montague and the travel writing of Evliya Celebi), we have moved back in time to the 17th & 18th century and to other perspectives on Empire.

First of all, both of our readings are about the Ottoman Empire, the successor to the Byzantine Empire, which had been in turn the successor to the Roman Empire.  The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1301 to 1923 and was primarily an Islamic empire although at times it was a surprisingly diverse and tolerant empire. 

Secondly, whereas Lady Mary Wortley Montague was British, Evliya Celebi was Turkish.  In other words, he was not a traveler from an outside empire coming to describe the colonies and define the Other.  He was writing about his own country.  Moreover, in Lady Mary's day, Britain was on the rise, but it was not as powerful as it would be in Conrad's time.

Below is a map of the Ottoman Empire in 1683, the year before Celebi's death.

 

This map from Baylor University shows the Ottoman Empire from 1798 to 1923:

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire would be known as the "Sick Man of Europe."  However, if you take a course in Early Modern history or literature, you will see that this empire was quite powerful then.  During the 16th and 17th century, the Ottomans attempted to take Vienna, and not until 1683 and the Battle of Vienna did they give up.

Here is Valdosta State University's map of Europe that will show you just how far into Europe Vienna and Austria are!

For more detailed information about the Ottoman Empire, see this link to the BBC's site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/ottomanempire_1.shtml

Korkut Ozgen has also put together an impressive site on this empire.  Here is a link to his pages on the empire's art and culture:

http://www.theottomans.org/english/art_culture/index.asp

Three or four years ago the Sackler Gallery had a wonderful exhibit on clothing and textiles from the Ottoman empire:

http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/StyleStatus.htm

DC's Textile Museum has an online exhibit on Ottoman embroidery:

http://www.textilemuseum.org/fsg/index.html

However, after reading Lady Mary's letters, you may be curious about harems!  Here, too, is an article from the Topkapi Museum's web site.  This museum is affiliated with Bilkent University, a university in Turkey's capital, Ankara.

http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/~history/harem.html

Here is a site on paintings of harem life, a popular Orientalist genre:

http://www.harem.org.uk/

I will close with an example of this genre, Theodore Chasseriau's "Scene of the Harem, Moorish Dame in Bath."  This painting dates from 1854.


As you may see from Renoir's painting from 1872, this genre of art included paintings of Frenchwomen dressed in "harem" costumes.

 

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?

 

 

 

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, and Home & Exile (part 3)

Chinua Achebe's Home and Exile (2000) is certainly life writing, but it fits into a separate category from the ones I mentioned in class today.  His book is made up of three essays that began as lectures at Harvard.  These essays touch on not only his life but also his opinions about literature.  One cannot call these essays "simply" memoirs.

The first essay, "My Home Under Imperial Fire," begins in a way that makes the reader believe that he or she is about to read a traditional memoir.  Achebe recalls his entry into his home village, Ogidi, the home that his father, a missionary, had chosen to retire to.  Ironically, as Achebe later observes, the relative who had been watching the family home for Achebe's father still worshipped the village gods.  In fact, the relative built a shrine in the home that the former missionary had planned to retire to.  Achebe's father destroyed the shrine; however, overall, in his recollections of his home village, Achebe emphasizes the persistence of Igbo values and culture.  He underscores their influence on his own life and work.

 

 

[The first picture above is from a Catholic newspaper in Sacramento, CA.  The girls in the procession are part of an Igbo parish there.  The second picture above is from the library at Southern Illinois University and depicts a man playing a drum in an Igbo ritual.]

In the next section of "My Home Under Imperial Fire," Achebe moves on to a discussion of European writing about Africa and mid-20th century African literature.  He recalls his classmates' recoiling from Mister Johnson, an Englishman's novel about an African.  (As you can see, the book was later made into a film with Pierce Brosnan.)  Achebe's English professors had thought that the students would be interested in reading a novel set in Nigeria.

 

In the next essay, "The Empire Fights Back," you see that Achebe's criticism of Conrad is part of a cultural context.  It is amazing but not surprising to see the criticism that an early work of African literature, Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952), received...from a Englishwoman who wrote a number of works set in Africa...and whose works have appeared on Masterpiece Theater!  Ironically, maybe not so ironically, as Achebe later notes, Nigerian students also complained about Tutuola's novel due to its lack of style and resemblance to a "folk tale."  Achebe then reveals that these students had not read the book!

However, Achebe also mentions authors and reviewers who were sympathetic towards African literature.  One was the poet Dylan Thomas who gave The Palm-Wine Drinkard a glowing review.  Another was F.J. Pedler who encouraged Africans to write about their continent.  

In the last essay, "Today, The Balance of Stories," Achebe contemplates the current state of African and other post-colonialist literature.  He praises writers such as Nadine Gordimer, Ama Ata Aidoo (an author from Ghana), and R.K. Narayan for the clarity of their vision and their willingness to avoid stereotypes.  On the other hand, he criticizes V.S. Naipaul and Buchi Emecheta for their eagerness to assimilate into mainstream British culture.  In particular, Achebe encourages writers to...in a way...cultivate their own garden--to depict what they have seen and experienced rather than to be ashamed of it and strive to write stereotypically. 

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, and Home and Exile (Part 2)

In this entry, I will focus on Things Fall Apart, the novel that we will be reading from after we finish Heart of Darkness. 

By the way, here is an advertisement for the 1987 TV miniseries version of the novel.  I found the image at www.africanmoviesdirect.com.  Here is a link to the You Tube channel where you may watch scenes from this miniseries.  It looks like the screenwriters have made changes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7FS95IcRNU

Hmmm ....the "irrepressible" Okonkwo. 

As you read Things Fall Apart, how would you describe Okonkwo?  In your opinion, how does the third-person narrator seem to feel about him?

If you've read Ed Pilkington's Guardian article (see part 1), you may know that Achebe originally conceived of Things Fall Apart as a multigenerational novel.  Instead, in his final version, the novel focuses on Okonkwo, a seemingly prosperous and powerful Igbo farmer.  He is not at odds with his society....or is he?  His violent temper concerns the other men in his village, and the novel takes place at the end of the 19th century as the British consolidate their rule over what is now known as Nigeria and Protestant missionaries convert the villagers to Christianity.

Here is a current map of Africa to give you an idea of where Nigeria is.

Below is a close-up map of Nigeria, fyi.

Here is a link to the BBC's profile of Nigeria:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1064557.stm

This timeline from the BBC will come in handy as well.  As we can see, Things Fall Apart takes place as the British are consolidating their rule.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1067695.stm

This Wikipedia page contains specific information about the ethnic makeup of Nigeria:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Nigeria

Because of the tensions that I mention below, the information is specific but not necessarily accurate.

Here is an article about the tribal tensions that still exist in Nigeria:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/census-stirs-old-rivalries-between-nigerias-tribes-470671.html

In fact, in the 1960s, shortly after the country became independent, members of the Igbo seceded and formed the nation of Biafra.  Civil war broke out, and by 1970, Biafra was rejoined to Nigeria.

I would also like to post information about the Igbo, the ethnicity to which Achebe and the African characters in his novel belong:

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/africa/igbo.html

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

http://www.geocities.com/athens/acropolis/3629/igbo.html

http://www.umunne.org/

And here is a link to a page on food in Nigeria!

http://www.foodbycountry.com/Kazakhstan-to-South-Africa/Nigeria.html

This site is by someone from the Yoruba group:

http://motherlandnigeria.com/food.html

I'd also like to post a link to the "virtual village" of Umuofia that I mentioned in part 1:

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~acareywe/umuofia/umuofiateachers.html

Finally, I will close with a few pictures.  First is a picture from Maine!  The curator of an African museum in Portland, Oscar Mokeme is teaching his son how to perform a song from the Igbo tradition.  (My husband and I have been to Mr. Mokeme's museum.)

Below is a picture that tells us what the egwugwu in Things Fall Apart may have looked like.  The picture is from a class site at Augusta State University.

Here is a reconstruction of an Igbo family compound.  It is part of an exhibit at Liverpool's International Slavery Museum.

I wanted to post this picture from www.everyculture.com as well to give you a picture of someone living in the huts. 

 

However, most Nigerians live in the city, so I thought I would end with this picture of a market in Lagos, the former capital.

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, and Home and Exile (part 1)

While I am champing at the bit for the semester to begin, I thought that I'd add an entry on the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, his first novel Things Fall Apart, and his 2000 book, Home and Exile, a trio of essays that began as the author's lectures at Harvard.  In fact, I feel a little guilty with all the Conrad entries I've posted so far. 

The first picture above is of Achebe and from the Guardian's blogs.  The second is one of the many editions of Things Fall Apart.  It appears to be an older edition and is from a Chinese web site.  As I've done with  Heart of Darkness, I could probably devote an entire entry to covers of Things Fall Apart.  So much has changed since 1958 when that novel was first published.  In fact, Achebe's homeland, Nigeria, would still be ruled by the British for another two years. 

Also, Multiply is a good place to repost some links that I have up at WebCT.  The first is to Achebe's "An Image of Africa," an essay that began as a lecture given at the University of Massachusetts in 1975:

http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html

In this essay, the author 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.

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

More recently, Ed Pilkington interviewed Achebe.  In this article also published in the guardian, the author recalls his original plan for Things Fall Apart.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/jul/10/chinuaachebe

Pilkington's article also gives you a better sense of Achebe's life.  For a more organized outline, see the BBC's biography:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/profile/chinua-achebe.shtml

This website's biography is more detailed and more recent:

http://chinua-achebe.com/index.htm

I know I am going to have to add another entry or two, so I will conclude with some pictures from Nigeria:

First is a picture of Achebe's birthplace, Ogidi:

Below is a picture from an Igbo woman's wedding.  The bride is wearing orange!

 

I am not sure when this picture dates from, but it is from a "virtual village" built to help American students understand Things Fall Apart a little better.

Also, if you go to Staunton, VA, you'll be able to see a replica of an Igbo village:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/05/igbo-village-re-created-for-museum/