Narrative Paths: African Travel in Modern Fiction and Nonfiction

338 Pages·2015·4.97 MB·English

by  Kai Mikkonen

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
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