
Death and Compassion
The Elephant in Southern African Literature
Dan Wylie(Author)
Wits University Press
Published on 1. October 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
280 pages
978-1-77614-218-7 (ISBN)
Description
Traces the literary history of the elephant, and its role in South Africa's cultural imaginary
Elephants are in dire straits - again. They were virtually extirpated from much of Africa by European hunters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but their numbers resurged for a while in the heyday of late-colonial conservation efforts in the twentieth. Now, according to one estimate, an elephant is being killed every 15 minutes. This is at the same time that the reasons for being especially compassionate and protective towards elephants are now so well-known that they have become almost a cliche: their high intelligence, rich emotional lives including a capacity for mourning, caring matriarchal societal structures, that strangely charismatic grace. Saving elephants is one of the iconic conservation struggles of our time.
As a society we must aspire to understand how and why people develop compassion - or fail to do so - and what stories we tell ourselves about animals that reveal the relationship between ourselves and animals. This book is the first study to probe the primary features, and possible effects, of some major literary genres as they pertain to elephants south of the Zambezi over three centuries: indigenous forms, early European travelogues, hunting accounts, novels, game ranger memoirs, scientists' accounts, and poems. It examines what these literatures imply about the various and diverse attitudes towards elephants, about who shows compassion towards them, in what ways and why. It is the story of a developing contestation between death and compassion, between those who kill and those who love and protect.
Elephants are in dire straits - again. They were virtually extirpated from much of Africa by European hunters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but their numbers resurged for a while in the heyday of late-colonial conservation efforts in the twentieth. Now, according to one estimate, an elephant is being killed every 15 minutes. This is at the same time that the reasons for being especially compassionate and protective towards elephants are now so well-known that they have become almost a cliche: their high intelligence, rich emotional lives including a capacity for mourning, caring matriarchal societal structures, that strangely charismatic grace. Saving elephants is one of the iconic conservation struggles of our time.
As a society we must aspire to understand how and why people develop compassion - or fail to do so - and what stories we tell ourselves about animals that reveal the relationship between ourselves and animals. This book is the first study to probe the primary features, and possible effects, of some major literary genres as they pertain to elephants south of the Zambezi over three centuries: indigenous forms, early European travelogues, hunting accounts, novels, game ranger memoirs, scientists' accounts, and poems. It examines what these literatures imply about the various and diverse attitudes towards elephants, about who shows compassion towards them, in what ways and why. It is the story of a developing contestation between death and compassion, between those who kill and those who love and protect.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Johannesburg
South Africa
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 225 mm
Width: 148 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
392 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-77614-218-7 (9781776142187)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Dan Wylie is a lecturer in the English Department at Rhodes University, Grahamstown. He has published three books on the Zulu leader Shaka; a memoir, Dead Leaves: Two years in the Rhodesian war (2002); and several volumes of poetry.
Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Compassion for elephants?
Chapter 1 No simple sort of mirror: Compassion and the pre-colonial
Chapter 2 Experiment and devastation: Travelogue and the advent of zoology
Chapter 3 A most delightful mania: Hunters' tales
Chapter 4 Not very good at remorse: Elephants in fiction
Chapter 5 A tear rolled down her face: Teen fiction and the elephant mind
Chapter 6 Bosses of the bushveld: Game ranger memoirs
Chapter 7 Repeatedly folded frontier: The 'field-research memoir'
Chapter 8 The cult of the remnant: The elephants of Knysna and Addo
Chapter 9 The elephant was unhappy: Poetry as compassion
Afterword
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
Compassion for elephants?
Chapter 1 No simple sort of mirror: Compassion and the pre-colonial
Chapter 2 Experiment and devastation: Travelogue and the advent of zoology
Chapter 3 A most delightful mania: Hunters' tales
Chapter 4 Not very good at remorse: Elephants in fiction
Chapter 5 A tear rolled down her face: Teen fiction and the elephant mind
Chapter 6 Bosses of the bushveld: Game ranger memoirs
Chapter 7 Repeatedly folded frontier: The 'field-research memoir'
Chapter 8 The cult of the remnant: The elephants of Knysna and Addo
Chapter 9 The elephant was unhappy: Poetry as compassion
Afterword
Bibliography
Index