As discussed in Chapter 4 of Moran’s Interdisciplinarity, history and literature have an intricately woven past that makes the two fields especially receptive to interdisciplinary practices. It is clearly visible in Western societies how much literature has impacted the practice and education of history. The Greeks and the Romans have their histories studied and dissected because the written works they left behind were comprehensible by Western scholars. A primary reason behind the Western world’s fascination with Egypt was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone which enabled historians and scholars to understand written hieroglyphs. Moran writes that “history needs to exist alongside the close reading skills learned in subjects such as literary studies” so that we may hope to understand the cultures of the past. Yet having scholars focus solely on the written remnants of history does have some disadvantages.
The focus on the literary aspect of history, or rather the transcribed aspects of history, has led to Western scholars neglecting the history and impact of cultures that relied heavily on oral tradition. No where is this neglect more evident than in the case of the ancient civilizations Africa. The inability of imperialist Europeans in the 1800s to understand the often orally transmitted histories of the African civilizations that had existed for centuries (as well a potent mix of ethnocentrism and social Darwinism), not only contributed to the decimation of numerous African cultures but also continues to contribute to the idea that Europe holds a monopoly on culture and humanity since the time of the Ancient Greeks.
In the vein of interdisciplinarity, the tendency of Europeans to forget the humanity and significance of African cultures that rely on oral tradition inevitably bleeds into European literature. A prime example of this is Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, which tells the story of an English sailor who ventures into Congo on behalf of a European company to recover an employee who has taken on an almost mystic quality among the Europeans and the Africans of the Congo. The novel sits on a precarious ledge academically speaking, with some people praising Conrad’s depiction of the native African tribes while others believe the novel does nothing except perpetuate the Euro-centric ideas that unfortunately still persist in Western education today. Yet the novel would have undoubtedly been tainted with Western stereotypes because Joseph Conrad was a European and his view of the Africans was the same as most of Europe’s view of the Africans during the middle of the Imperialist Age. The culture of the Africans described in Heart of Darkness was unknown, lost due of a focus on written history and a neglect for oral traditions and thus I personally believe the novel was written in the only manner Conrad would’ve been able to write given the society around him during the late 1800s.
Whatever your stance on Heart of Darkness, it is undoubtedly an example of history melding with literature. Without the colonization of the African continent and the inability of Western powers to even remotely understand the cultures found in Africa, the novel would never have existed and the conversations that continue to stem from it would never have occurred. When scholars attempt to separate the threads that bound history and literature together for the sake of establishing “turf” to claim and defend , society loses out on not only the chance to reflect on the mistakes of the past but the chance to prevent further errors in the future.
The oral traditions of Africa may have been discarded by the first Western scholars but more and more the disciplines of history and literature are widening their horizons to include the work that extends beyond the boundaries of Europe. By studying the literature of a time period such as Heart of Darkness, we are able to better understand the history of that time and continue on the path to understanding the societies that were left behind in the wake of European imperialism.
Below is a link to an article written by African writer Chinua Achebe explaining his stance of Heart of Darkness: http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html