Malaria and Victorian Fictions of Empire: 114 (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Series Number 114)
Cambridge University Press, 11/26/2020
EAN 9781108462457, ISBN10: 1108462456
Paperback, 258 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The impact of malaria on humankind has been profound. Focusing on depictions of this iconic 'disease of empire' in nineteenth-century and postcolonial fiction, Jessica Howell shows that authors such as Charles Dickens, Henry James, H. Rider Haggard, Olive Schreiner and Rudyard Kipling did not simply adopt the discourses of malarial containment and cure offered by colonial medicine. Instead, these authors adapted and rewrote some common associations with malarial images such as swamps, ruins, mosquitoes, blood, and fever. They also made use of the unique potential of fiction by incorporating chronic, cyclical illness, bodily transformation and adaptation within the very structures of their novels. Howell's study also examines the postcolonial literature of Amitav Ghosh and Derek Walcott, arguing that these authors use the multivalent and subversive potential of malaria in order to rewrite the legacies of colonial medicine.
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Nationalism and acute malaria in transatlantic fiction
Charles Dickens and Henry James
2. Malaria and the imperial romance
H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines
3. Malarial feminisms
Olive Schreiner and the allegories of chronic disease
4. The boy doctor of empire
malaria and mobility in Rudyard Kipling's Kim
5. Rewriting the bite
the Calcutta chromosome, mosquitoes, and global health politics
Coda
towards a postcolonial health humanities
Bibliography.