Re-evaluation of Prophet Mohammed’s Image in Victorian Literature

 The following study is about the re-evaluation and reconsideration of the Prophet Mohammed’s life in the Victorian literature. Prior to the nineteenth century, when Islam constituted a threat to Europe, westerners perpetuated many stereotypes about the Prophet. However, during the Victorian era, some writers did not only abandon the old misconceptions, they even went further by denouncing and correcting them. Hence, from the impostor, anti- Christ, subjugator of women, and a heretic, Muhammed became a hero and a model leader in the writings of Carlyle, Bosworth Smith and others.

Linguistic and Cultural Hybriduty in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: Proverbial Quoting or the Art of An Mbari House

“Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly,and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten (1958:5).”No doubt, those of you who have read Chinua Achebe’s Things FallApart still remember this comment that Achebe’s narrator andmouthpiece throws in the process of reporting a conversation betweenUnoka and Okoyo in the first pages of the book

Female Monsters in Kabyle Myths and Folktales: their Nature and Functions

This article seeks to explore the nature and functions of monsters in Kabyle myths, which are primarily a male cultural production, and folktales, which mostly constitute the “cultural capital” of traditional Kabyle women in Algeria. Using Leo Frobenius’s (1921, 1996) three-volume collection of traditional Kabyle narratives as a corpus, and adopting a feminist perspective, the investigation has resulted in the realization that the representation of the Kabyle woman as monster is a predominant feature in the myths, and even more so in the folktales. It is argued that the excess of female monstrous representations, and the attractive and complex manner in which these representations are made in the folktales signify much more a symbolic resistance than a reproduction of the Kabyle man’s mythologies about gender power relations

Marcus Garvey’s Nationalist Discourse: Its Hegelian Origins and Zionist Resonances

Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) stands as one of the most prominent figures in the articulation of what is known as the Pan-Africanist movement. Though born in colonial Jamaica, it was in the 1920s America that he assumed the stature as a thinker about the colonial problem. Among his extant writings, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, or Africa for the Africans is the one book or collection of articles and speeches which best articulates his post-colonial discourse. This postcolonial thought has of late received the interest of critics like Rupert Lewis (1988), Tony Sewell (1990) and Collin Grant (2008). However, to date, as far as my knowledge goes, these critics have not tried to retrace directly or indirectly he Hegelian contours of his discourse though Hegel is known to have provided, inadvertently it must be said, the method for overturning the power relations for most postcolonial theorists. Nor have they, always according to the best of my knowledge, sought to explain how Garvey came to pattern the black man’s quest for national self-determination on Zionism. It is the purpose of the following article to do just that, i.e. show that Garvey’s imagined national state is patterned on Hegelian and Zionist templates. To this end I shall appeal to discourse analysis and historicist criticism as critical movements giving importance to both text and context. 

The Patriotism of David Humphreys: Nation, Narration, Orientalism and the Algerine Captivity Question

This paper has studied the patriotism of David Humphreys as it is revealed in his Orientalist vision of Algiers during the so-called Barbary captivity crisis. His patriotism works out as a narrative of America’s march towards a state of nationhood, which he does through his Orientalist appropriation of Algiers. This is related to his celebration of the ideals of the American nation in contrast to a demonization of Algiers. Therefore, his patriotic poems are considered as narratives of the United States as a nation of liberty and progress contrasted to Algiers as a slave and despotic power. Following Homi Bhabha’s idea of nationness, the paper has shown David Humphreys’s celebration of the American people’s march into the status of “freedom’s heirs” entitled with “the pursuit of happiness”. This is through the workings of the Institutions of the land for the promotion and protection of the ideals of justice, equality and freedom. As narration involves progress rather than regress, he adds that the United States is bestowed a “glorious future” as the people inherited the fundamental principle of the “love of nation” and the commitment to it body and soul. He brings these issues vividly through a contrast he draws with Algiers and the so-called “pirate race” as well as the European nations which tended to be tributary to Algiers and the assaults effected against the new nation.

CONRAD, GIDE, AND CAMUS: THE PERILS OF LIBERAL ANTI-COLONIALISM

Joseph Conrad has won a prominent place in the English literary tradition though he couldhave earned a similar name for himself in the French literary tradition if he had tried his hand in writing in French of which he had also a good command. However, his choice of writing in English has by no means diminished the impact that oeuvre, and much more particularly his Heart of Darkness has had on French writers such as André Gide, who in critical circles came to be dubbed as the “Conrad de France.” In this research, we would argue that Albert Camus also fully deserves the nickname of a French Conrad adduced to Gide because of those striking resemblances in their works as imperial authors. Admittedly, unlike Gide, Camus is not Conrad’s fellow contemporary. He neither exchanged friendly correspondence with Conrad across the English Channel, nor did he write that stylized version of Heart of darkness that Gide called Travels in the Congo,which explicitly invites comparison of the two authors.  However, as we would contend Camus followed Gide’s lead by having another look at the imperial or colonial world through Joseph Conrad’s eyes to correct and adjust the existential vision of life in relation to the Self-Other encounter that Gide develops in his writings about colonial Algeria and the Congo. Hopefully, a triangular historicist postcolonial perspective oncontroversial fictions such as Conrad’sHeart of Darkness on the one hand, and Camus’ The stranger  and Gide’s Travels in the Congo as well as Nourrituresterrestres on the other hand, will enrich the already available critical literature on the three authors and their ambivalent stand to empire.Keywords: Conrad, Gide, Camus, colonialism, critique, allegory, political unconsciou

Hubertine Auclert: a Champion of Algerian Women’s Rights or an Imperialist Feminist?

The lives of Muslim women have long been a source of fascination and have aroused feelings ranging from curiosity, to erotic desire and sometimes repulsion. This fascination is nothing new, but goes back to centuries before to the first encounter between Islam and Europe in the Middle Ages. As Mohja Kahf documents in her book, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman (1999), western interest in the Muslim woman goes back as far as the Middle Ages

Abolition in Joseph Conrad’s African Writings: A Discourse Analysis

This paper has studied the issue of abolition in the African writings of Joseph Conrad. Written and published in the last decade of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth centuries when the British campaign against King Leopold II’s slave system in the Congo was active, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “An Outpost of Progress” and his letters to Roger Casement, the British diplomat who was charged to investigate on the atrocities of the Congo in 1903, are taken to be part of the British effort to eradicate the slavery system in the colonies. These writings are read through the principles of the British abolitionists who revealed to the world the atrocities exerted upon the natives of Africa in the name of the so-called humanitarian principle of the imperial project. Conrad’s abolitionism reveals itself in his claim for an international campaign against the slavery system in Africa. It also reveals itself in his depiction of the atrocities exerted upon the Africans: inhuman exploitation, starvation, punishment and death. All these wicked aspects of the slave system are denounced by the abolitionists, and Conrad adheres to their denunciation