Malaria and Victorian Fictions of Empire

Study of malaria in literature and culture illuminates the legacies of nineteenth-century colonial medicine within narratives of illness.

Jessica Howell (Author)

9781108484688, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 October 2018

252 pages, 4 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.5 cm, 0.54 kg

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.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX], Medical sociology [MBS], Historical geography [HBTP], General & world history [HBG], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literary theory [DSA]