Exploring Victorian Travel Literature: Disease, Race and Climate

Description

Studies representations of white illness in Victorian travel narratives about Africa and the Caribbean This interdisciplinary study explores both the personal and political significance of climate in the Victorian imagination. It analyses foreboding imagery of miasma, sludge and rot across non-fictional and fictional travel narratives, speeches, private journals and medical advice tracts. Well-known authors such as Joseph Conrad are placed in dialogue with minority writers such as Mary Seacole and Africanus Horton in order to understand their different approaches to representing white illness abroad. The project also considers postcolonial texts such as Wilson Harris’s Palace of the Peacock to demonstrate that authors continue to ‘write back’ to the legacies of colonialism by using images of climate induced illness. Title page Copyright Contents Series Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Mrs Seacole Prescribes Hybridity: 2 Mapping Miasma, Containing Fear: 3 Africanus Horton and tThe Climate of African Nationalism 4 ‘Climate proof’: 5 ‘Self rather seedy’: Conclusion:The Afterlife of Climate Bibliography Index