Anna Cichoń
Henryk Sienkiewicz's In the Desert and Wilderness from the perspective of colonial studies
In his African novel addressed to young readers, Henryk Sienkiewicz uses codes, genre conventions and discourses characteristic of colonial literature. Architextual references to the exotic picaresque adventure novel, to the Robinsonade and romance, discourses applied for the presentation of characters and settings, as well as the Eurocentric (cognitive and aesthetic) perspective from which the narrator observes the world presented, have an impact upon the ideological message of the work. A pro-British interpretation of historical events, belief in the white man's burden, idealization of the European protagonist, stereotypical portraits of female characters, ethnographic gaze at the Blacks and the Arabs, presentation of the continent as an unknown and incomprehensible place, make Sienkiewicz's image of Africa bear semblance to the representations of the dominions in English literature at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.
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Zasady cytowania
Nr 8 (2004)
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