The legacies of colonialism and imperialism are ubiquitous in politics, literature and historiography. When Rudyard Kipling encouraged the U.S. government in his 1899 poem “The White Man's Burden” to accept the responsibilities of imperial extension, imperialism and the ideal of the superiority of Western civilization were uncontested. Nevertheless, Kipling was able to refer back to a long line of predecessors who had already established the ideology he was advocating in his writings.
In this seminar we will discuss a number of seminal texts in order to retrace the processes that brought this ideology into being. Beginning with the epitome of Protestant work ethics, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, we will mainly focus on the strategies and techniques used to ascertain Western, or rather British moral superiority and the legitimacy of British colonial endeavors. After that, we will engage with Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as diametrically opposed engagements with late nineteenth-century discourses about colonialism and imperialism. Students are required to get hold of the following novels:
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe. Oxford's World Classics.
Henry Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines. Oxford's World Classics.
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness. Norton Critical Edition. |
