Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830 - 1914

by Patrick Brantlinger

A major contribution to the cultural and literary history of the Victorian age, Rule of Darkness maps the complex relationship between Victorian literary forms, genres, and theories and imperialist, racist ideology. Critics and cultural historians have usually regarded the Empire as being of marginal importance to early and mid-Victorian writers. Patrick Brantlinger asserts that the Empire was central to British culture as a source of ideological and artistic energy, both supported by and lending support to widespread belief in racial superiority, the need to transform "savagery" into "civilization," and the urgency of promoting emigration.

Rule of Darkness brings together material from public records, memoirs, popular culture, and canonical literature. Brantlinger explores the influence of the novels of Captain Frederick Marryat, pioneer of British adolescent adventure fiction, and shows the importance of William Makepeace Thackeray's experience of India to his novels. He treats a number of Victorian best sellers previously ignored by literary historians, including the Anglo-Indian writer Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug and Seeta. Brantlinger situates explorers' narratives and travelogues by such famous author-adventurers as David Livingstone and Sir Richard Burton in relation to other forms of Victorian and Edwardian prose. Through readings of works by Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, John Hobson, and many others, he considers representations of Africa, India, and other non-British parts of the world in both fiction and nonfiction.

The most comprehensive study yet of literature and imperialism in the early and mid-Victorian years, Rule of Darkness offers, in addition, a revisionary interpretation of imperialism as a significant factor in later British cultural history, from the 1880s to World War I. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with Victorian culture and society and, more generally, with the relationship between Victorian writers and imperialism, 'and between racist ideology and patterns of domination in modern history.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Books About Books, Criticism, History

309 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1988

Reviews

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Rule of Darkness does not seem to be written to be read cover to cover, but rather like a good anthology, it will have you dipping in and out of it depending on your interests. For me the most absorbing sections were towards the end, when the author creates the term “Imperial Gothic” to describe late Victorian novels like “Dracula” and “She.” “Dracula” can be read as representing the horrors of invasion (by Eastern European Jews), sexual degeneracy, and being “infected” back into an undead state of non-Western savagery. In “She,” a (white) supernatural goddess of Africa threatens to conquer England and become its vicious new queen, pointing to a general fear that imperialist chickens may come home to roost. In the chapter, “Genealogy of the Dark Continent,” Brantlinger does an amazing job of explaining the origins of Western views of Africa as the heart of darkness, a stereotype that contaminates our subconscious to this day (you will never be able to watch Tarzan the same way again). Other chapters about Thackeray’s relationship to India, or Australian emigration in literature will appeal only to specialists. The book ends with a bang-up job on Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” the ultimate expression of both European racism and anti-imperialism—the seeming contradiction of which Conrad was well aware of.

[Harriet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful in terms of colonialism and looking at 'Heart of Darkness' and 'The Tragedy of the Korosko'

[The Half-blood Reader]

College reads: I only read chapters/sections relevant to my studies, hence the dnf