Interpreting luguru religious practice through colonialist eyes: Child sacrifice and East African dance in Brett Young's The Crescent Moon
Public perceptions of indigenous African religious life have been heavily influenced by its representation in imaginative literature and film, both before and after serious scholarly investigations yielded detailed analyses in little-read professional journals and other academic publications. While...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
ASRSA
[2015]
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| In: |
Journal for the study of religion
Year: 2015, Volume: 28, Issue: 1, Pages: 06-22 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Young, Francis Brett 1884-1954, The crescent moon
/ Tanzania
/ Luguru (African people)
/ Nature religion
/ Child sacrifice
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| RelBib Classification: | AG Religious life; material religion BB Indigenous religions KBN Sub-Saharan Africa RJ Mission; missiology |
| Further subjects: | B
Luguru (African people)
B Missionaries B Francis Brett Young B Tanzania B Child Sacrifice B African Religion B East Africa |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | Public perceptions of indigenous African religious life have been heavily influenced by its representation in imaginative literature and film, both before and after serious scholarly investigations yielded detailed analyses in little-read professional journals and other academic publications. While serving as a medical officer in German East Africa (present-day Tanzania) during the First World War, the increasingly popular English novelist and poet Francis Brett Young, who would eventually write nine books set in sub-Saharan Africa and die in Cape Town in 1954, described Luguru religious practices in his widely praised non-fictional account Marching on Tanga and his first African novel, The Crescent Moon. It is argued in the present article that Brett Young severely misrepresented his subject, not least by ascribing child sacrifice to the Luguru. His presentation of this ostensible dimension of tribal worship as a vestige of transplanted ancient Semitic propitiation rituals is found to be unwarranted. |
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| ISSN: | 2413-3027 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the study of religion
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