Authors:
- First study to explore in depth the role of literature in popularising race science in the colonies
- Combines methodologies drawn from critical anthropology, imperial history and literary studies
- Analyses the representation of Indigenous peoples across texts including newspapers, periodicals and popular novels
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture (PNWC)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This book offers an innovative new framework for reading British and settler representations of Indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century. Taking the representation of the Southern African San as its case study, it uses methodologies drawn from critical anthropology, imperial history and literary studies to show the role that literary representations of Indigenous peoples played in popularising the hierarchical view of racial difference. The study identifies an ‘ethnographic poetics’ in which the claims of scientific discourse blend with a consciously literary preference for metaphor and analogy. This created a set of mobile figures that could be disseminated to different reading publics in both Britain and the colonies through a variety of literary genres and textual media. It advances research on race and imperial history by focusing on the importance of literature - from newspapers and periodicals to popular novels - in shaping discourses of national and racialbelonging in Britain and the Cape Colony.
Authors and Affiliations
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School of English, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
Lara Atkin
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Writing the South African San
Book Subtitle: Colonial Ethnographic Discourses
Authors: Lara Atkin
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86226-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-86225-1Published: 28 November 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-86228-2Published: 29 November 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-86226-8Published: 01 January 2022
Series ISSN: 2634-6494
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6508
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 212
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, African Literature, Imperialism and Colonialism, Ethnography