Dilemmi coloniali in un testo dimenticato
Black Heart and White Heart di Henry Rider Haggard
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1285/i22390359v75p81-92Parole chiave:
colonial literature, gender, ethnicity, spatiality, Henry Rider HaggardAbstract
The article examines Henry Rider Haggard’s Black Heart and White Heart (1896), claiming that this understudied novella needs to be rediscovered and studied today. By analysing the novella’s spatiality and characterisation, the article highlights its innovative aspects in comparison to Haggard’s best-known romances of the 1880s, suggesting that these novelties bear evidence of important changes in the author’s ideological stance. A first object of scrutiny is the representation of Zulu space. The use of Zulu toponyms and the attention for both spatial and historical details make the novella’s setting more realistic than the imaginary, gothicised settings of Kings Solomon’s Mines (1885) and She (1887), proving Haggard’s increased respect for indigenous culture. A similar attitude can be traced in the unwonted characterisation of Black Heart and White Heart. The novella challenges colonial propaganda by opposing a British villain to a Zulu hero and by encouraging the reader to empathise with the latter. Dominant prejudices of white virtue and black corruption are significantly reversed in the text which, by problematising the age’s conceptualisation of skin-colour and morality, also casts a shadow on the legitimacy of colonial domination. Finally, the chapter focuses on the thought-provoking portrayals of two Zulu women who, unlike other indigenous women featured in the more famous romances, challenge established views of gender and ethnicity.
Riferimenti bibliografici
Ashcroft B., Griffiths G. and Tiffin H. 2007 (2000), Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, second edition, Routledge, London /New York.
Brantlinger, P. 1988, Rule of Darkness. British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914, Cornell University Press, Ithaca/London.
Ching-Liang Low G. 1996, White Skins/Black Masks. Representation and Colonialism, Routledge, London/New York.
Conrad J. 1990 (1899), Heart of Darkness, in Heart of Darkness and Other Tales, ed. Cedric Watts, Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, pp. 132-252.
Epprecth M. 2010. The ‘making’ of African sexuality, in “History Compass” 8 [8], pp. 768-779. 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2010.00715.x (9.1.2026).
Holst-Petersen K. and Rutherford A. 1985, A Double Colonization: Colonial and Post-Colonial Women’s Writing, Dangaroo, Aarhus.
Fanon F. 1953, Peau noire, masques blancs, Éditions du Seuil, Paris.
Haggard R. H. 1989 (1885), King Solomon’s Mines, ed. Dennis Butts, Oxford University Press, Oxford/ New York.
Haggard R. H. 1981 (1896), Black Heart and White Heart, in The Best Short Stories of Rider Haggard, ed. Peter Haining, Michael Joseph, London, pp. 68-119.
McLaughlan R. 2012, Re-imagining the ‘Dark Continent’ in Fin de Siècle Literature, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
Olupona J. K. 2014, African Religions: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York.
Said E. 1993, Culture and Imperialism, Chatto & Windus, London.
Spivak G. 1985, The Rani of Sirmur: an essay in reading the archives, in “History and Theory” 24 [3] (October), pp. 247-272.
Stiebel L. 2001, Imagining Africa: Landscape in H. Rider Haggard’s African Romances, Greenwood Press, Westport/London.
Tally R. T. Jr. 2013, Spatiality, Routledge, London/New York.
Downloads
Pubblicato
Fascicolo
Sezione
Licenza
Authors who publish with this publication accept all the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license at the link below.
Gli autori che pubblicano in questa rivista accettano i termini e le condizioni specificate nella licenza Creative Commons di cui al link sottostante.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/it/legalcode
