Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Laureys, Tom

Titel

Intellectuele toe-eigening en discursief geweld in Focquenbrochs Afrikaense Thalia (1678)

Ist Teil von

• Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 2020-07, Vol.57 (2), p.1-13

Ort / Verlag

Pretoria: Tydskrif vir Letterkunde Association

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

ProQuest_Literature Online_英美文学在线

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In 1668, the Dutch medic and poet Willem Godschalck van Focquenbroch left Amsterdam for the African Gold Coast to become fiscaal (a kind of public prosecutor) on behalf of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) at Elmina Castle in Guinea, which was a bulwark of the Dutch transatlantic slave trade. In his posthumously published Afrikaense Thalia (African Thalia, 1678), a collection of poems and letters containing the well-known Afrikaense Brieven (African Letters), Focquenbroch testifies to his life and work in Elmina Castle through his alter ego Focq. In this article, I use Stephen Greenblatts notions of wonder and possession to demonstrate that Focqs descriptions in the Afrikaense Brieven can be read as an expression of his initial wonder for, and subsequent appropriation of Guinea and its inhabitants. Focqs conviction that he is superior to the Guineans because he possesses written language enables him to frame his writing in a discourse which stresses the superiority of the own culture and the culturelessness of the African Other.