dc.contributor.author | Varela-Zapata, Jesús | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2022-11-11T11:31:14Z | |
dc.date.available | 2022-11-11T11:31:14Z | |
dc.date.issued | 1997 | |
dc.identifier.issn | e-2530-8335 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/30589 | |
dc.description.abstract | The quotation above, from Virgil’s Aeneid, serves to illustrate the
ill-fated relationship between Europeans and Africans since the times
of colonization. Literature reflects how this meeting of races has not
been a successful story. Joseph Conrad and Chinua Achebe, now considered
classic figures in the portrayal of the African plight, denounce
in their work the abuse of the African population, a phenomenon which
costs many lives and has since then represented the most revolting aspect
of the European intervention. As we will see in this paper, the
supercilious colonists, paradoxically enough, had also to undergo physical
and spiritual ordeals. Conradian figures as Kurtz, Carlier or Kayerts
attest to the hardships imposed on them by the hostile landscape and
their own moral disintegration. Nadine Gordimer, writing at the end of
the XX century, reflects how the inheritors of those European explorers,
merchants and officers, now living in a post-colonial African context,
are suffering a similar plight. They have become a marginal minority,
feeling the rejection of the citizens of the newly-independent
countries and being the easy target of the demagogy of the post-colonial
rulers. Very often, they are also weighed down by the burden of the
feelings of guilt over the colonial abuses or by their own futile attempts
to cling to old positions of privilege. | en_EN |
dc.language.iso | en | es_ES |
dc.publisher | Servicio de Publicaciones. Universidad de La Laguna | es_ES |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, Año 1997 n. 35, pp. 235-243; | |
dc.rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional | * |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ | * |
dc.title | "The Gods Disapprove of the Mingling of Peoples": Conrad, Achiebe and Gordimer on the Plight of Europeans in Africa | en_EN |
dc.type | info:eu-repo/semantics/article | |
dc.rights.accessRights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess | es_ES |
dc.type.hasVersion | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion | es_ES |