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Narrative Paths: African Travel in Modern Fiction and Nonfiction PDF

338 Pages·2015·4.97 MB·English
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Theory and InTerpreTaTIon of narraTIve James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Robyn Warhol, Series Editors Narrative Paths african travel in Modern Fiction and Nonfiction Kai MiKKoNeN THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS • COLUMBUS Copyright © 2015 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mikkonen, Kai. Narrative paths : African travel in modern fiction and nonfiction / Kai Mikkonen. pages cm. — (Theory and interpretation of narrative) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1274-5 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-8142-9379-9 (cd-rom) 1. Travelers’ writings, European—History and criticism. 2. European fiction—History and criti- cism. 3. Narration (Rhetoric) 4. Postcolonialism in literature. 5. Africa—In literature. I. Title. PN56.T7M55 2015 809'.93355—dc23 2014033910 Cover design by Laurence J. Nozik Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na- tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CoNteNts List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix InTroducTIon Factual Places and Fictional Routes 1 parT I • narraTIng and descrIbIng WesT afrIca 1 The Enchanted Arrival: Passage into West Africa in the Travel Writings of Blaise Cendrars, André Gide, and Graham Greene 41 2 The Rhetoric of the Mad African Forest in Joseph Conrad, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and Graham Greene 69 3 Travel Narrative between Spatial Sequence and Open Consequence in Graham Greene’s Journey Without Maps 88 parT II • Travel WrITIng and The novel 4 The Immediacy of Reading: André Gide’s Travel Fact and Travel Fictions 113 5 The Incongruous Worlds of Evelyn Waugh’s Ethiopia 147 6 A Critique of the African Picturesque in Georges Simenon’s Travel Reportages and Novels 183 vi • Contents parT III • InvenTIons of lIfe narraTIve 7 Virtual Genres in Pierre Loti’s and Joseph Conrad’s African Travel Diaries and Fiction 221 8 Out of Europe: The African Palimpsest in Michel Leiris’s L’Afrique fantôme 240 9 Africanist Paradoxes of Storytelling in Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa 266 In conclusIon Fiction, Colonial Travel Narrative, and the Allegorist 292 References 305 Index 317 List oF iLLustratioNs fIgure 1 Map of Ubangi-Shari and Chad, showing André Gide’s route between August 1925 and May 1926 52 fIgure 2 Map of Liberia, showing Graham Greene’s route in the spring of 1935 94 fIgure 3 Map of East Africa, showing the places that Evelyn Waugh visited between October 1930 and March 1931 158–59 fIgure 4 Fictional map from Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh 164 fIgure 5 Map of Georges Simenon’s travel through Africa in the summer of 1932 184 fIgure 6 Map of the River Congo from Norman Sherry’s Conrad’s Western World, showing Conrad’s route from Boma to Stanley Falls and back between June and December 1890 230 fIgure 7 Map of Mission Dakar-Djibouti (May 1931–February 1933) 243 fIgure 8 The stork figure in the story “The Roads of Life” in Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa 269 vii aCKNowLedgMeNts The Idea for this book originated in the fall of 2002 when I had the oppor- tunity to spend a month at the Finnish-African Cultural Centre Villa Karo in Grand-Popo, Benin. The many signs of the colonial era that I took note of in Benin and Togo inspired me to explore the ways in which the European travel writers perceived sub-Saharan Africa in the heyday of colonialism. I am grateful to the managers and the staff of Villa Karo, and the many local people, who made this eye-opening visit possible, as well as to my wife Alma for her company during our many memorable excursions in this region. Without the three years I spent at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in 2003–2006, this book would not have been written. It was a great privilege to focus on research for this time and benefit from discussions with stellar scholars from various fields in the humanities and other fields. Many people have read parts of the book in the course of its develop- ment. In the early stages of the work, discussions with David Scott in Hel- sinki and Dublin, and David’s insightful reactions to my work, encouraged me to pursue the project. I also owe debts of gratitude to a number of friends and colleagues in English Philology at the University of Helsinki. I must par- ticularly acknowledge John Calton’s helpful readings of earlier drafts of this work, his ideas about a possible title for the book, and his genuine inter- est in my research during the last years of the writing process. I am also thankful to Howard Sklar, Mark Shackleton, and Laurel Bush, a specialist of ix

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In Narrative Paths: African Travel in Modern Fiction and Nonfiction, Kai Mikkonen argues that early twentieth-century European travel writing, journal keeping, and fiction converged and mutually influenced each other in ways that inform current debates about the fiction–nonfiction distinction. Turn
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