Description
Book SynopsisPenetrating Critiques pairs Victorian literary texts set in Africa with archival texts in order to explore the fraught problem of British masculinity and its construction.
Trade Review"In an analysis that straddles [...] the binary critical history of Heart of Darkness, Allin evokes the complexity and complicity of Conrad’s narrative. An epilogue on representations of empire after 9/11 brings the argument into the 21st century." -- N. Birns, New York University *
CHOICE *
"In her well-researched and well-written study, Leslie Allin traces signs of anxiety in a range of texts about Africa from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, including archival documents, newspaper reports, and popular fiction." -- Jochen Petzold, University of Regensburg *
Victorian Periodicals Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I: Ruptures in Adventure Romance 1. Permeable Boundaries: Violence and Fantasy in Zululand 2. H. Rider Haggard’s Inversions: Vulnerability and the Narrative Volatility of Imperial Romance Part II: Gothic Penetrations 3. Transgression and Loss: General Gordon and Gothic Imagination 4. Marsh’s Perforations: Desire, Imperial Decay, and the Narrative Instability of The Beetle Part III: Modernist Dissolutions 5. Bodily Disintegrations: Forensic Exposure and the Human Leopard Society in Sierra Leone 6. Getting to the Hearts of Darkness Works Cited
