1 - Introduction: Filling the Blank Spaces
from PART ONE - INTRODUCTION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
Summary
Blank spaces
In his narrative of Central African exploration, Through the Dark Continent (1878), Henry Morton Stanley tells his companion Frank Pocock, who was soon to drown on their adventure:
‘Now look at this, the latest chart which Europeans have drawn of this region. It is a blank, perfectly white. …
I assure you, Frank, this enormous void is about to be filled up. Blank as it is, it has a singular fascination for me. Never has white paper possessed such a charm for me as this has, and I have already mentally peopled it, filled it with most wonderful pictures of towns, villages, rivers, countries and tribes — all in the imagination — and I am burning to see whether I am correct or not.’
(Stanley 1890, p. 449)A couple of decades later, Marlow, the protagonist of Joseph Conrad's tale, Heart of Darkness, set mainly in the unnamed but identifiable Congo, would declare:
‘Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look like that) I would put my finger on it and say, When I grow up I will go there.’ (Conrad 1973, p. 11)
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- Travel Writing in the Nineteenth CenturyFilling the Blank Spaces, pp. 1 - 18Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2006
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