An Enchanting Darkness: The American Vision of Africa in the Twentieth CenturyAn Enchanting Darkness: the American Vision of Africa in the Twentieth Century is more than just another look at racism, cultural bias, and the images that under-gird widely held misconceptions about an entire continent. Going beyond convention, this important new work analyzes the way truisms and stereotypes have perpetuated negative and naive images of Africa and its people. Dennis Hickey and Ken Wylie probe the reasons why such unfortunate views have persisted, even among groups of supposedly well-educated Americans. They examine the concept of the "Noble Savage" and trace its evolution within the media of our popular culture and within the literature produced by scholars. American perceptions of Africa are shown to have been influenced by French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau's ideas, research undertaken by anthropologists Franz Boaz and Melville Herskovits, and by nine decades of pervasive imagery presented by twentieth-century writers like Saul Bellow, Laura Bohannan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alex Haley, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Theroux, Maria Thomas, John Updike, and Alice Walker. Finally, An Enchanting Darkness examines the symbolic conventions presented to the American public that also have been manipulated to create counter-myths that are as hollow and destructive as the older shibboleth of Africa as a "dark continent". |
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Page 94
... frontier , and of the Native Americans - however misunder- stood - who , until recently , had inhabited and dominated it . It is difficult to discern a clear watershed in all this , that is , to clearly define the beginnings of a ...
... frontier , and of the Native Americans - however misunder- stood - who , until recently , had inhabited and dominated it . It is difficult to discern a clear watershed in all this , that is , to clearly define the beginnings of a ...
Page 126
... frontier novels were written before the civil war and hundreds after . Many of these were first serialized in ... frontier occasioned one of the most influen- tial articles ever published by a historian , Frederick Jackson Turner's ...
... frontier novels were written before the civil war and hundreds after . Many of these were first serialized in ... frontier occasioned one of the most influen- tial articles ever published by a historian , Frederick Jackson Turner's ...
Page 127
... Frontier in American History " ( The Frontier in American History [ New York : Holt and Co. , 1921 ( 1893 ) ] ) . Turner's thesis , that the frontier environment of America had shaped the American character , has been noted by virtually ...
... Frontier in American History " ( The Frontier in American History [ New York : Holt and Co. , 1921 ( 1893 ) ] ) . Turner's thesis , that the frontier environment of America had shaped the American character , has been noted by virtually ...
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Of Naked Apes and Noble Savages | 7 |
Reflections in a Hall of Mirrors | 29 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
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adventure African American African culture African History Afrocentricity Amerindians analysis ancient anthropology Arabs argued Asante basic Black Americans Boas British Burroughs century Chicago civilization colonial Congo contemporary continent critical Crummell Dahomey decades East Africa economic Edgar Rice Burroughs Egypt elephants Elijah Muhammad especially Ethiopia ethnic ethnographic Europe European fiction forest Franz Boas frontier Heart of Darkness Hemingway Hemingway's Henry Henry Morton Stanley Herskovits historians human Ibid idea ideological image of Africa intellectual Islam Johnson Kung Levi-Strauss Liberia literature lived London Marcus Garvey Matthiessen missionary modern Muhammad Muslim myth native Negro novel Nuer political popular primitive published Pygmies race racial racist reader region role romantic Roosevelt Ruark safari savage scholars seems slavery social society South Stanley stereotypes story Sudan symbolic conventions Tarzan theory Theroux tion traditional tribes University Press vision W. E. B. Du Bois West western William Woodson writers York