The empire threatened. Rider Haggard’s literature facing the decadence

Authors

  • Ráquel Sánchez García Universidad Complutense de Madrid

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18172/cif.2557

Keywords:

English literature, Imperial Gothic, Imperialism, Popular literature, Haggard, decadence

Abstract

This paper analyzes the imperialist English literature from the perspective of the decline of the empire and the threat of the colonized. I have studied the work of Rider Haggard and especially one of his best-known novels that reflects very clearly these features: "She. A History of Adventures" (1887). With this novel, Haggard created a metaphor of the Western fear to the primitive world, although it was subject to his power: a world that threatened the solidity of Victorian England.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

ARATA, S. (1990). “The Occidental tourist: Dracula and the anxiety of reverse colonization”. Victorian Studies 33 (4): 621-645.

ARATA, S. (1996). Fiction of loss in Victorian fin de siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

BELL, D. (2006). “From Ancient to Modern in Victorian Imperial Thought”. The Historical Journal 49 (3): 735-759.

BERESFORD ELLIS, P. (1978). H. Rider Haggard. A Voice from the Infinite. Londres: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

BRANTLINGER, P. (1988). Rule of Darkness. British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914. Londres-Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

CALINESCU, M. (2003). Cinco caras de la modernidad. Modernismo, vanguardia, decadencia, kitsch, postmodernismo. Madrid: Tecnos.

COHEN, M. (1960). Rider Haggard. His life and works. Londres: Hutchison of London.

CHRISMAN, L. (2000). Rereading the imperial romance: British imperialism and South African resistance in Haggard, Schreiner, and Plaatje. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press.

DEMOOR, M. (1987). “Andrew Lang’s Letters to H. Rider Haggard: the record of a harmonius friendship”. Études Anglaises 40 (3): 313-321.

ETHERINGTON, N. (1978). “Rider Haggard, Imperialism and the Layered Personality”. Victorian Studies 22 (1): 71-87.

ETHERINGTON, N. (1984). Rider Haggard. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

ETHERINGTON, N. (1991): “Introduction and notes” en The annotated She. A Critical Edition of H. Rider Haggard’s Victorian Romance. Bloomington e Indianápolis: Indiana University Press.

FREEMAN, M. (2001). “Rider Haggard and Rural England: methods of social enquiry in the English countryside: methods of social enquiry in the English countryside”. Social history 26 (2): 209-216.

HAGGARD, H. R. (1905). Ayesha: The Return of She. <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5228>.

HAGGARD, H. R. 2007 (1887). She. A History of Adventures. Londres: Penguin Classics.

HAGGARD, H. R. (1923). Wisdom’s Daughter: The Life and Love Story of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200181.txt>.

HAGGARD, H. R. 2006 (1926). The Days of My Life. An Autobiography. Teddington: The Eco Library.

HARRIS, M. (2003). El desarrollo de la teoría antropológica: historia de las teorías de la cultura. Madrid: Siglo XXI.

HIGGINS, D. S. (1983). Rider Haggard. A Biography. New York: Stein and Day Publishers.

HURLEY, K. (2004). “British Gothic Fiction, 1885-1930” en The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. (Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

HYNES, S. (1968). The Edwardian Turn of Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

KATZ, W. 2010 (1987). Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

KRISTEVA, J. (2004). “Sobre la abyección” en Poderes de la perversión. México: Siglo XXI.

MURPHY, P. (1999). “The Gendering of History in She”, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 39 (4): 747-772.

SANDISON, A. (1967). The Wheel of Empire. A study of the imperial idea in some late nineteenth and early twentieth-century fiction. London, Melbourne: Macmillan.

STIEBEL, L. (2001). Imagining Africa: landscape in H. Rider Haggard’s African romances. Londres: Greenwood Press.

TODA IGLESIA, Mª A. (2002). Héroes y amigos: masculinidad, imperialismo y didactismo en la novela de aventuras británica, 1880-1914. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca.

STOTT, R. (1989). “The Dark Continent: Africa as Female Body in Haggard’s Adventure Fiction”. Feminist Review 32: 69-89.

WARWICK, A. (1998). “Vampires and the empire: fears and fictions of the 1890s” en Cultural Politics at the Fin de Siècle. (Ed. S. Ledger y S. McCraken). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

WILT, J. (1981). “The Imperial Mouth: Imperialism, the Gothic and Science Fiction”. Journal of Popular Culture 14 (4): 618-628.

YOUNG, S. (2005). “Myths of Castration: Freud's 'Eternal Feminine' and Rider Haggard's She”. Victorian Newsletter 108: 21-30.

Published

2013-12-20

How to Cite

Sánchez García, R. (2013). The empire threatened. Rider Haggard’s literature facing the decadence. Cuadernos De Investigación Filológica, 39, 107–128. https://doi.org/10.18172/cif.2557

Issue

Section

Articles