Imagining and living the exotic
A context for early rhodesian novels
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20156490 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anthony Chennells (University of Zimbabwe, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 137-158 |
| Publication date | 2003-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387 |
| Publisher | Unisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02564710308530322 |
| OpenAlex | W2018602580 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
The paper discusses some early Rhodesian novels within the context of nineteenth‐century debates about the exotic and recent theories about exoticism. The exotic has various temporal and spatial locations that are always sites of desire constructed from what is perceived to be absent in the present. Technological developments and radical social changes created different and competing absences in Victorian England and the paper compares responses to these by Tennyson and Ruskin. Pater, by contrast, rejects social contingency and celebrates instead the power of the individual imagination to create alternative and pleasurable realities. The competing demands of the lived and the imagined exotic can be seen in early Rhodesian writing. In Haggard's novels, written before Rhodes's occupation of Mashonaland, the interior of Africa is a landscape of romance. After Haggard had met Rhodes the interior is written as a potential colony and the colony denies the exotic its discrete existence. Early settler writers often claim that Rhodesia has given their characters a liberating individuality but this claim is never sustained within the novels as the expectations of the settler collective are given precedence over the individual. Invariably the novels turn away from the esoteric in favour of realist negotiations of public and private meanings
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Contingency · Epistemology · Exoticism · Literature · Narrative · Negotiation · Romance · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |