It is a commonplace that Nietzsche makes heavier use of metaphor than most philosophers. But the boundaries between metaphor and literal language are unclear, especially when Nietzsche uses biological terms. Recent commentators, anxious to avoid biological reductionism, have interpreted such terms as purely metaphorical. But recent studies suggest that Nietzsche worked within a nineteenth-century intellectual context that may be called 'biologism,' which saw biology as providing models for processes in other areas of life, but did not reduce them to biology. To test this insight, the present article examines particularly the metaphors (or apparent metaphors) used for processes of change in The Genealogy of Morals, showing how Nietzsche draws on two branches of scholarship that he especially valued: philology and biology. At certain difficult points in Nietzsche's argument, these metaphors come under strain, especially when Nietzsche applies a whole series of incompatible metaphors to explain (or seem to explain) the development of 'slave morality.' ********** Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals is a hugely, almost insanely ambitious treatise. It undertakes to explain the origins not only of morals but of society, custom, law, class differences, religion, priesthood, and scholarship--all under the sign of the Will to Power. Being concerned with origins, it is also concerned with change and continuity. It asks, for example, how primitive man, who lived from day to day, was changed, over the millennia, into the modern autonomous subject capable of remembering the past and making promises about the future. But it also undertakes to reveal the continuity, for instance, between the early priest with his terrifying ascetic practices and the modem scholar whose asceticism takes the form of a devotion to truth. Nietzsche therefore needs models for change combined with continuity, and he finds two such models in the sciences of his own day. One is philology, which traces the transformation of words; the other is evolutionary biology, which examines the transformation of organisms. In addition, especially in the third essay, he appeals also to physiology and medicine. His constant reference to these sciences gives Nietzsche's late prose a rich metaphorical texture. Where, though, does metaphor stop and literal meaning begin? Many of Nietzsche's recent interpreters ascribe to him a radical epistemological skepticism that would deny the possibility of knowledge and truth. Hence there could be no literal language, because there would be no solid reality for such language to refer to. And indeed The Genealogy of Morals ends by questioning the search for truth, describing it as the last remnant of Christian asceticism, and speaking admiringly of the Islamic sect whose secret doctrine was "Nothing is true, everything is permitted" (III, 24). (1) Yet the Preface seems to announce a factual, scholarly, painstaking search for the truth about morality. Contrasting his ow
{"title":"The Limits of Metaphor in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals","authors":"R. Robertson","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv16kkx6n.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16kkx6n.24","url":null,"abstract":"It is a commonplace that Nietzsche makes heavier use of metaphor than most philosophers. But the boundaries between metaphor and literal language are unclear, especially when Nietzsche uses biological terms. Recent commentators, anxious to avoid biological reductionism, have interpreted such terms as purely metaphorical. But recent studies suggest that Nietzsche worked within a nineteenth-century intellectual context that may be called 'biologism,' which saw biology as providing models for processes in other areas of life, but did not reduce them to biology. To test this insight, the present article examines particularly the metaphors (or apparent metaphors) used for processes of change in The Genealogy of Morals, showing how Nietzsche draws on two branches of scholarship that he especially valued: philology and biology. At certain difficult points in Nietzsche's argument, these metaphors come under strain, especially when Nietzsche applies a whole series of incompatible metaphors to explain (or seem to explain) the development of 'slave morality.' ********** Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals is a hugely, almost insanely ambitious treatise. It undertakes to explain the origins not only of morals but of society, custom, law, class differences, religion, priesthood, and scholarship--all under the sign of the Will to Power. Being concerned with origins, it is also concerned with change and continuity. It asks, for example, how primitive man, who lived from day to day, was changed, over the millennia, into the modern autonomous subject capable of remembering the past and making promises about the future. But it also undertakes to reveal the continuity, for instance, between the early priest with his terrifying ascetic practices and the modem scholar whose asceticism takes the form of a devotion to truth. Nietzsche therefore needs models for change combined with continuity, and he finds two such models in the sciences of his own day. One is philology, which traces the transformation of words; the other is evolutionary biology, which examines the transformation of organisms. In addition, especially in the third essay, he appeals also to physiology and medicine. His constant reference to these sciences gives Nietzsche's late prose a rich metaphorical texture. Where, though, does metaphor stop and literal meaning begin? Many of Nietzsche's recent interpreters ascribe to him a radical epistemological skepticism that would deny the possibility of knowledge and truth. Hence there could be no literal language, because there would be no solid reality for such language to refer to. And indeed The Genealogy of Morals ends by questioning the search for truth, describing it as the last remnant of Christian asceticism, and speaking admiringly of the Islamic sect whose secret doctrine was \"Nothing is true, everything is permitted\" (III, 24). (1) Yet the Preface seems to announce a factual, scholarly, painstaking search for the truth about morality. Contrasting his ow","PeriodicalId":39582,"journal":{"name":"Nineteenth Century Prose","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90807187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For those who see Emerson as a seminal figure in American pragmatism, 2003 marks not only the bicentennial of Emerson's birth, but a century since William James and John Dewey delivered addresses that constitute their most explicit public pronouncements on their great American precursor. While the recent renaissance in Emerson studies has coincided with a rediscovery of Emerson's incipient pragmatism, the full import of his affinities to the American pragmatists remains under-appreciated--especially in regards to how we are to read and assess the body of his work. Much criticism persists in reading Emerson as a naively optimistic idealist of the monistic variety, and even those who stress the pluralistic nature of Emerson's vision question just how far, and to what purpose, one can claim the "pragmatic" character of his thought. This issue can be illuminated by considering how William James himself applied his pragmatic method in reading and assessing Emerson's writings. James asserts that the true meaning of competing philosophical beliefs lies in their practical consequences for human behavior--in their ability to guide our actions to results that satisfy our human needs. For James, the most "pregnant" of such philosophical conflicts is that between monism and pluralism, for only a pluralistic universe, one with genuine contingency and novelty, can satisfy our need to make moral judgments and contribute meaningful efforts toward improving our world. Moreover, James insists that pluralism is an anti-absolutist view, capable of acknowledging a great deal of determinism and unification in the world, capable of seeing the world as both "one" and "many," so long as there exists some small, yet sufficient, degree of indeterminacy. Short of adopting a truly absolutist determinism, James concludes, assertions of unity (such as one finds peppered throughout Emerson's writings) are relatively empty statements that express a sheer wonder at the existence of the universe. In his 1903 centenary address, James applies these arguments to assert that Emerson's sensitivity to "the rank diversity of individual facts" made his vision essentially pluralistic, and he pragmatically locates the fundamental pluralism of Emerson's thought in its prescriptions for human behavior: far from an "indiscriminate" monistic optimism, Emerson endorses a melioristic activism that prefigures the ethics of both James and Dewey. James' assessment helps highlight how Emerson expresses such pluralistic attitudes in essays such as "Self-Reliance," "Nominalist and Realist," and "The Uses of Great Men." In another regard, however, it is necessary to extend James' logic beyond his own conclusions. As his reaction to the conclusion of Emerson's essay "History" shows, James concluded that Emerson's voicing of conflicting perspectives, while not compromising the essential pluralism of his vision, was evidence of his failure to achieve philosophic consistency. Following critics such as Poiri
{"title":"What's the Use of Reading Emerson Pragmatically? the Example of William James","authors":"J. M. Albrecht","doi":"10.2307/j.ctt13x0bvb.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt13x0bvb.5","url":null,"abstract":"For those who see Emerson as a seminal figure in American pragmatism, 2003 marks not only the bicentennial of Emerson's birth, but a century since William James and John Dewey delivered addresses that constitute their most explicit public pronouncements on their great American precursor. While the recent renaissance in Emerson studies has coincided with a rediscovery of Emerson's incipient pragmatism, the full import of his affinities to the American pragmatists remains under-appreciated--especially in regards to how we are to read and assess the body of his work. Much criticism persists in reading Emerson as a naively optimistic idealist of the monistic variety, and even those who stress the pluralistic nature of Emerson's vision question just how far, and to what purpose, one can claim the \"pragmatic\" character of his thought. This issue can be illuminated by considering how William James himself applied his pragmatic method in reading and assessing Emerson's writings. James asserts that the true meaning of competing philosophical beliefs lies in their practical consequences for human behavior--in their ability to guide our actions to results that satisfy our human needs. For James, the most \"pregnant\" of such philosophical conflicts is that between monism and pluralism, for only a pluralistic universe, one with genuine contingency and novelty, can satisfy our need to make moral judgments and contribute meaningful efforts toward improving our world. Moreover, James insists that pluralism is an anti-absolutist view, capable of acknowledging a great deal of determinism and unification in the world, capable of seeing the world as both \"one\" and \"many,\" so long as there exists some small, yet sufficient, degree of indeterminacy. Short of adopting a truly absolutist determinism, James concludes, assertions of unity (such as one finds peppered throughout Emerson's writings) are relatively empty statements that express a sheer wonder at the existence of the universe. In his 1903 centenary address, James applies these arguments to assert that Emerson's sensitivity to \"the rank diversity of individual facts\" made his vision essentially pluralistic, and he pragmatically locates the fundamental pluralism of Emerson's thought in its prescriptions for human behavior: far from an \"indiscriminate\" monistic optimism, Emerson endorses a melioristic activism that prefigures the ethics of both James and Dewey. James' assessment helps highlight how Emerson expresses such pluralistic attitudes in essays such as \"Self-Reliance,\" \"Nominalist and Realist,\" and \"The Uses of Great Men.\" In another regard, however, it is necessary to extend James' logic beyond his own conclusions. As his reaction to the conclusion of Emerson's essay \"History\" shows, James concluded that Emerson's voicing of conflicting perspectives, while not compromising the essential pluralism of his vision, was evidence of his failure to achieve philosophic consistency. Following critics such as Poiri","PeriodicalId":39582,"journal":{"name":"Nineteenth Century Prose","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75990060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Kenneth M. Price and Susan Belasco Smith (UP of Virginia, 1995), vi + 292 pp., $45.00 cloth, $17.50 paper. Nineteenth-century American periodical literature, the editors of this volume assert, constitutes "a social text" woven of "complex relationships among writers, readers, editors, publishers, printers, and distributors" (3). The importance of this claim is amply indicated by the collected essays, which immerse the reader in fascinating historical cross-currents. The subjects of these essays clearly are social texts; rather than a discrete "work" or an individual author, the essays move naturally and necessarily between examination of the editors, contributors, audiences, geographical regions, demographic profiles, marketing strategies, and other elements that go together, literally, to make a periodical "text." In exploring these social texts, the essayists purposely raise more issues and questions than can be readily resolved. For example, when Larry J. Reynolds examines Margaret Fuller's revision of the Dial essay "The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women" into the book Woman in the Nineteenth Century, he identifies Fuller's vacillation between intellectual elitism and democratic idealism as a central tension. However, Reynolds points out, her success at fusing these tensions "remains an open question" (17). Such openness is virtually mandated by Reynolds's methodological assumptions: He is not examining an individual text or an isolated author, but rather the revision of a periodical article into a book and the related transition of Fuller from editor of the exclusive Dial into a correspondent for the popular New York Tribune. Margaret Fuller's fluctuating ideas of authorship during this period are intertwined with the two periodicals, which in turn must struggle to survive (or, preferably, thrive) amidst changing conceptions of audience, changing practices of authorship, and changing distribution of intellectual commodities. Because the import of these cultural currents is so manifestly nonlinear--revealing the swirl of commercial successes and failures, more so than traditional, academic authorial intentions--Reynolds performs an invaluable service by examining Fuller's expressed hopes and fears from within the ad hoc material conditions of her literary marketplaces. Does Fuller change, or do marketplaces change her? Is a mass audience the same thing as increased democracy? Is mass circulation more effective than private circulation of manuscripts and ideas? Does commerce necessarily corrupt even our culture's most intellectual efforts--and if so, how? Such questions, still so vital in late-twentieth-century culture, are uncovered in rich fossil form by Reynolds's study of periodical literature. Despite radical implications, the book is strikingly modest in theoretical claims. Editors Price and Smith position their approach to periodicals primarily as an under-explored
期刊《19世纪美国文学》，Kenneth M. Price和Susan Belasco Smith主编(弗吉尼亚大学出版社，1995年)，共292页，布价45.00美元，纸价17.50美元。本书的编辑断言，19世纪的美国期刊文学构成了“一种社会文本”，由“作者、读者、编辑、出版商、印刷商和分销商之间的复杂关系”编织而成(3)。这一主张的重要性在文集中得到充分体现，这些文集使读者沉浸在迷人的历史潮流中。这些文章的主题显然是社会文本;这些文章不是一个独立的“作品”或一个单独的作者，而是自然而必然地在对编辑、撰稿人、读者、地理区域、人口统计概况、营销策略和其他因素的审查之间移动，这些因素结合在一起，从字面上看，构成了期刊的“文本”。在探讨这些社会文本时，散文家故意提出了更多的问题，而不是容易解决的问题。例如，当拉里·j·雷诺兹(Larry J. Reynolds)研究玛格丽特·富勒(Margaret Fuller)对Dial论文《大诉讼:男人对男人》(the Great litigation: Man versus Men)的修订时。在《19世纪的女人》一书中，他认为富勒在知识精英主义和民主理想主义之间的摇摆是一种中心张力。然而，雷诺兹指出，她在融合这些紧张关系方面的成功“仍然是一个悬而未决的问题”(17)。这种开放性实际上是由雷诺兹的方法论假设所决定的:他不是在研究一篇单独的文本或一个孤立的作者，而是在研究将一篇期刊文章修改成一本书，以及富勒从独家版《Dial》的编辑转变为流行的《纽约论坛报》的记者。玛格丽特·富勒在这一时期对作者身份的摇摆不定的想法与这两种期刊交织在一起，而这两种期刊反过来又必须在不断变化的读者观念、不断变化的作者身份实践和不断变化的知识商品分配中挣扎求生(或者最好是茁壮成长)。因为这些文化潮流的输入是如此明显的非线性——揭示了商业成功与失败的漩涡，而不是传统的学术作者的意图——雷诺兹通过从她的文学市场的特殊物质条件中审视富勒所表达的希望和恐惧，提供了宝贵的服务。是富勒改变了，还是市场改变了她?大众受众等同于民主的增加吗?手稿和思想的大规模流通是否比私人流通更有效?商业是否一定会腐蚀我们文化中最具智慧的努力?如果是，又是如何腐蚀的?这些问题在20世纪晚期的文化中仍然如此重要，雷诺兹对期刊文学的研究以丰富的化石形式揭示了这些问题。尽管有激进的暗示，这本书在理论主张上却出奇地谦虚。编辑普赖斯和史密斯把他们对期刊的研究定位为一种未被充分探索的“书的历史”批评，在过去15年里，这种批评在凯茜·n·戴维森的《美国的阅读:文学和社会历史》(1989)和理查德·h·布罗德黑德的《文学文化:19世纪美国的阅读和写作场景》(1993)等雄心勃勃的著作中得到了发展。他们选择不攻击学者对书籍的特权，也不详细说明这种特权所带来的可疑假设。显然，缺乏详尽的理论姿态是战略性的:卷的目的是刺激研究和提出问题，而不是赌注知识领域和构建坚定的结论。不过，我认为编辑们低估了期刊文学作为一门主要学科的重要性，而不是作为书籍研究的次要学科。“期刊，”他们的引言称，“曾经被视为文化的反映和背景细节的挖掘，现在被认为是文化的核心组成部分………
{"title":"Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America","authors":"Gib Prettyman","doi":"10.5860/choice.33-5593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.33-5593","url":null,"abstract":"Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, ed. Kenneth M. Price and Susan Belasco Smith (UP of Virginia, 1995), vi + 292 pp., $45.00 cloth, $17.50 paper. Nineteenth-century American periodical literature, the editors of this volume assert, constitutes \"a social text\" woven of \"complex relationships among writers, readers, editors, publishers, printers, and distributors\" (3). The importance of this claim is amply indicated by the collected essays, which immerse the reader in fascinating historical cross-currents. The subjects of these essays clearly are social texts; rather than a discrete \"work\" or an individual author, the essays move naturally and necessarily between examination of the editors, contributors, audiences, geographical regions, demographic profiles, marketing strategies, and other elements that go together, literally, to make a periodical \"text.\" In exploring these social texts, the essayists purposely raise more issues and questions than can be readily resolved. For example, when Larry J. Reynolds examines Margaret Fuller's revision of the Dial essay \"The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women\" into the book Woman in the Nineteenth Century, he identifies Fuller's vacillation between intellectual elitism and democratic idealism as a central tension. However, Reynolds points out, her success at fusing these tensions \"remains an open question\" (17). Such openness is virtually mandated by Reynolds's methodological assumptions: He is not examining an individual text or an isolated author, but rather the revision of a periodical article into a book and the related transition of Fuller from editor of the exclusive Dial into a correspondent for the popular New York Tribune. Margaret Fuller's fluctuating ideas of authorship during this period are intertwined with the two periodicals, which in turn must struggle to survive (or, preferably, thrive) amidst changing conceptions of audience, changing practices of authorship, and changing distribution of intellectual commodities. Because the import of these cultural currents is so manifestly nonlinear--revealing the swirl of commercial successes and failures, more so than traditional, academic authorial intentions--Reynolds performs an invaluable service by examining Fuller's expressed hopes and fears from within the ad hoc material conditions of her literary marketplaces. Does Fuller change, or do marketplaces change her? Is a mass audience the same thing as increased democracy? Is mass circulation more effective than private circulation of manuscripts and ideas? Does commerce necessarily corrupt even our culture's most intellectual efforts--and if so, how? Such questions, still so vital in late-twentieth-century culture, are uncovered in rich fossil form by Reynolds's study of periodical literature. Despite radical implications, the book is strikingly modest in theoretical claims. Editors Price and Smith position their approach to periodicals primarily as an under-explored","PeriodicalId":39582,"journal":{"name":"Nineteenth Century Prose","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89166438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries","authors":"S. Gilman","doi":"10.1086/ahr/97.3.821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/97.3.821","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39582,"journal":{"name":"Nineteenth Century Prose","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1989-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86787513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1988. At a time when new historicism is sometimes ahistoricism, when cultural materialism is often unrelated to literary analysis, what a splendid book this is to have. Firmly grounded in ample readings in social history and everywhere informed by a matchless familiarity with Victorian literature, Brantlinger's study exemplifies cultural studies at its best and most productive. Setting out to map the development of imperialist ideology, primarily in adventure tales, travel narratives, novels, and histories, he shows that the discourse of imperialism is a vital enabling factor in the expansion of empire in the nineteenth century. From Marryat's maritime tales of the 1830s through Thackeray's India, the literature of Botany Bay, and Orientalist fantasies of the latter quarter of the century, we arrive at Brantlinger's stunning genealogical chart of the myth of the Dark Continent--Europe's idea of Africa, in all its darkness and its horror. Let me give some idea of the supple readings that culminate in a refreshing insistence that we "see" (to use Conrad's word from his Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus) the dreadful ambiguities of Heart of Darkness, a text which resists uniform interpretation as exposure of atrocities in the Congo or as ephemeral impressionism. Perhaps the most significant imperative of Rule of Darkness is that we put aside a narrow definition of imperialism as the late nineteenth-century acquisition of new territories by European nations. Brantlinger insists that early and mid-Victorians expressed imperialist ideology in their writings and that imperialism "understood as an evolving but pervasive set of attitudes and ideas toward the rest of the world, influenced all aspects of Victorian and Edwardian culture" (8). But this set of attitudes and ideas undergoes profound change throughout the century, as he demonstrates in his analysis of a shift from hopeful evangelical reform of the savage "other" to a sense of decay, decadence, and loss about the "improving" enterprise at the end of the century. In-between (among other things), Brantlinger shows that Frederick Marryat's tales set the pattern for "the imperialist adventure fiction that flourished from the seafaring writers who emulated him in the 1830s ... down to Haggard, Stevenson, Kipling, and Conrad" (49), and that the literature of Botany Bay expresses contradictions characterizing "the entire literature of emigration and colonization. Were emigrants themselves outcasts, social misfits, criminals? If so, how could they be viewed as the vanguard of an Empire whose goal was nothing less than semidivine, the redemption of the nonwestern world from darkness and barbarism" (113). The posing of this question exemplifies what is particularly good about Brantlinger's study, his identification and sustained elaboration of the deep contradictions embedded in all imperialis
{"title":"Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914","authors":"D. David","doi":"10.5860/choice.26-1376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.26-1376","url":null,"abstract":"Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1988. At a time when new historicism is sometimes ahistoricism, when cultural materialism is often unrelated to literary analysis, what a splendid book this is to have. Firmly grounded in ample readings in social history and everywhere informed by a matchless familiarity with Victorian literature, Brantlinger's study exemplifies cultural studies at its best and most productive. Setting out to map the development of imperialist ideology, primarily in adventure tales, travel narratives, novels, and histories, he shows that the discourse of imperialism is a vital enabling factor in the expansion of empire in the nineteenth century. From Marryat's maritime tales of the 1830s through Thackeray's India, the literature of Botany Bay, and Orientalist fantasies of the latter quarter of the century, we arrive at Brantlinger's stunning genealogical chart of the myth of the Dark Continent--Europe's idea of Africa, in all its darkness and its horror. Let me give some idea of the supple readings that culminate in a refreshing insistence that we \"see\" (to use Conrad's word from his Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus) the dreadful ambiguities of Heart of Darkness, a text which resists uniform interpretation as exposure of atrocities in the Congo or as ephemeral impressionism. Perhaps the most significant imperative of Rule of Darkness is that we put aside a narrow definition of imperialism as the late nineteenth-century acquisition of new territories by European nations. Brantlinger insists that early and mid-Victorians expressed imperialist ideology in their writings and that imperialism \"understood as an evolving but pervasive set of attitudes and ideas toward the rest of the world, influenced all aspects of Victorian and Edwardian culture\" (8). But this set of attitudes and ideas undergoes profound change throughout the century, as he demonstrates in his analysis of a shift from hopeful evangelical reform of the savage \"other\" to a sense of decay, decadence, and loss about the \"improving\" enterprise at the end of the century. In-between (among other things), Brantlinger shows that Frederick Marryat's tales set the pattern for \"the imperialist adventure fiction that flourished from the seafaring writers who emulated him in the 1830s ... down to Haggard, Stevenson, Kipling, and Conrad\" (49), and that the literature of Botany Bay expresses contradictions characterizing \"the entire literature of emigration and colonization. Were emigrants themselves outcasts, social misfits, criminals? If so, how could they be viewed as the vanguard of an Empire whose goal was nothing less than semidivine, the redemption of the nonwestern world from darkness and barbarism\" (113). The posing of this question exemplifies what is particularly good about Brantlinger's study, his identification and sustained elaboration of the deep contradictions embedded in all imperialis","PeriodicalId":39582,"journal":{"name":"Nineteenth Century Prose","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1989-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75254650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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