University of Canterbury Home
    • Admin
    UC Research Repository
    UC Library
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
    View Item 
    1. UC Home
    2. Library
    3. UC Research Repository
    4. Faculty of Arts | Te Kaupeka Toi Tangata
    5. Arts: Theses and Dissertations
    6. View Item
    1. UC Home
    2.  > 
    3. Library
    4.  > 
    5. UC Research Repository
    6.  > 
    7. Faculty of Arts | Te Kaupeka Toi Tangata
    8.  > 
    9. Arts: Theses and Dissertations
    10.  > 
    11. View Item

    Western representations of the Congo in twentieth-century fictional texts (2021)

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Rae, Logan_Master's Thesis.pdf (4.346Mb)
    Type of Content
    Theses / Dissertations
    UC Permalink
    https://hdl.handle.net/10092/103116
    http://dx.doi.org/10.26021/12250
    
    Thesis Discipline
    English
    Degree Name
    Master of Arts
    Publisher
    University of Canterbury
    Language
    English
    Collections
    • Arts: Theses and Dissertations [1830]
    Authors
    Rae, Logan
    show all
    Abstract

    Through the close analysis of four Western texts set in the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, and Zaire, this thesis examines how representations of the Congo and its indigenous people changed over the course of the twentieth century. The intrinsic relationship between language and Western culture is best reflected through the term ‘colonialist discourse,’ which is based on colonisers’ assumption of their own superiority, contrasted with the alleged inferiority of the indigenous peoples of the lands they colonised. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how fictional representations of the Congo in Western fiction both reinforces and undermines this colonialist discourse. The fictional texts analysed in this study are Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), Herge Tintin au Congo (1931), Graham Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case (1960), and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (1998). In what follows, I examine the development of anticolonialism in European and American fictional texts over the course of the twentieth century, and utilise various theoretical frameworks from postcolonial critical theory to analyse the relationship between Western characters and indigenous Congolese in the selected texts. Guided by the works of key postcolonial theorists, such as Bill Ashcroft, Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Abdul R. JanMohamed, Edward Said, and Gayatria Spivak, I argue that cultural hegemony, Eurocentrism, and imperialistic attitudes are challenged and critiqued in Western fiction over the course of the twentieth century. My findings indicate that the hierarchical binary opposition between ‘Western’ characters in the Congo and indigenous Congolese is destabilised through transculturation, with the Self versus Other dichotomy becoming drastically less prevalent as the texts chronologically move towards the end of the twentieth century.

    Rights
    All Rights Reserved
    https://canterbury.libguides.com/rights/theses

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Revisiting the murderess representations of Victorian women's violence in mid-nineteenth- and late-twentieth-century fiction 

      Ritchie, Jessica Frances (University of Canterbury. School of Culture, Literature and Society, 2006)
      The murderess in the twenty-first century is a figure of particular cultural fascination; she is the subject of innumerable books, websites, documentaries and award-winning movies. With female violence reportedly on the ...
    • Propaganda in prose : a comparative analysis of language in British Blue Book reports on atrocities and genocide in early twentieth-century Britain. 

      Gilmour, Thomas (University of Canterbury, 2016)
      This paper examines three British Blue Book reports published in early twentieth-century Britain during the war period. The first report examines the invasion of Belgium by the German army and their maltreatment of Belgian ...
    • After the earth moved : accounting and accountability for earthquake relief and recovery in the early twentieth-century New Zealand 

      Vosslamber R (SAGE Publications, 2015)
      There has been little discussion of what archival accounting evidence can contribute to an understanding of a society’s response to a natural disaster. This article focuses on two severe earthquakes which struck New Zealand ...
    Advanced Search

    Browse

    All of the RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThesis DisciplineThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThesis Discipline

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics
    • SUBMISSIONS
    • Research Outputs
    • UC Theses
    • CONTACTS
    • Send Feedback
    • +64 3 369 3853
    • ucresearchrepository@canterbury.ac.nz
    • ABOUT
    • UC Research Repository Guide
    • Copyright and Disclaimer
    • SUBMISSIONS
    • Research Outputs
    • UC Theses
    • CONTACTS
    • Send Feedback
    • +64 3 369 3853
    • ucresearchrepository@canterbury.ac.nz
    • ABOUT
    • UC Research Repository Guide
    • Copyright and Disclaimer