Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to a History in the Manner of an Essay
- Part I Forming the British Essay
- Part II The Great Age of the British Essay
- Part III Assaying Culture, Education, Reform
- Part IV Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
- 29 The Preface Essay
- 30 A Brief History of Travel and the Essay
- 31 Grist for the Mill: History and the Essay in India, 1870–1920
- 32 The African Gold Coast Essay: Straddling Fact and Prophecy
- 33 The Short Essay in Context, 1870–1920
- 34 A Room of One’s Own: The New Woman and the Essay
- 35 The Essay in the Age of Catastrophe
- 36 Undiplomatic Relations: Modernism and the Essay
- 37 Feeling Real: Psychoanalysis and the Essay
- 38 Transatlantic Essayism
- Part V The Essay and the Essayistic Today
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
32 - The African Gold Coast Essay: Straddling Fact and Prophecy
from Part IV - Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2024
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- The Cambridge History of the British Essay
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface to a History in the Manner of an Essay
- Part I Forming the British Essay
- Part II The Great Age of the British Essay
- Part III Assaying Culture, Education, Reform
- Part IV Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds
- 29 The Preface Essay
- 30 A Brief History of Travel and the Essay
- 31 Grist for the Mill: History and the Essay in India, 1870–1920
- 32 The African Gold Coast Essay: Straddling Fact and Prophecy
- 33 The Short Essay in Context, 1870–1920
- 34 A Room of One’s Own: The New Woman and the Essay
- 35 The Essay in the Age of Catastrophe
- 36 Undiplomatic Relations: Modernism and the Essay
- 37 Feeling Real: Psychoanalysis and the Essay
- 38 Transatlantic Essayism
- Part V The Essay and the Essayistic Today
- Book part
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter reads the essay form as key to the consolidation of the Gold Coast intelligentsia in the early twentieth century, when Anglo-Fante public intellectuals including J.E. Casely Hayford, S.R.B. Attoh Ahuma, and J.W. de Graft Johnson sought to persuade their London audience of Africans’ capacity for self-determination. In using the essay form to negotiate the relationship between national and Christian leadership qualities, they also tested the boundary between neutral practices of observation and religious experience. Casely Hayford’s 1915 essay ‘William Waddy Harris’, on a prominent West African evangelist, is an especially rich case study in how to reconcile a premium on facticity with a new openness to direct communion with God. In this way, Gold Coast anti-colonial intellectuals introduce an anti-secularising vector to the history of the essay form as well as to the rise of the African nation state.
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- The Cambridge History of the British Essay , pp. 483 - 496Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024