The Dimensions of Attila the Hun

For well over a millennium after his death in the fifth century, Attila the Hun was victim to calumnious artistic and verbal representations as the quintessential barbarian and Other. Some historians defamed him a half-human. Others slandered his name by adapting a brief corporeal catalog compiled by Jordanes in the Getica (c. 551), a history of the Goths. Jordanes’ pejorative assessment of Attila’s supposed physical characteristics (arrogant gait and gaze, snub nose, alleged offensive skin pigmentation) served later chroniclers as an explanation for the failures and successes of Attila, helping to influence reader perception. Medieval and early modern representations of Attila call to mind the campaign against Tamerlane in art and print. Here are gathered for the first time several early German versions of the physical features of Attila, as transmitted by Jordanes.

Racial slurs and perception of racism in Heart of Darkness

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of the racial slurs nigger and negro in Heart of Darkness on readers’ perception of dehumanisation, discrimination, and racism. It compares data collected through online questionnaires to test whether the absence or different frequencies of the slurs influence how participants perceive the fictional representation of the African people in the text. Three versions of the same questionnaire are used: one with unmodified passages from Heart of Darkness, one with the same passages but without the racial slurs, and one with the same passages but with more slurs than in the original. Findings show that the absence or overabundance of slurs compared to the original does not alter reader perception of dehumanisation, discrimination, and racism. By comparing the results, this paper makes two interconnected contributions. First, it contributes to the critical discussion about racism in Conrad’s novel, by providing evidence on whether the representation of the Africans is perceived as dehumanising, discriminatory, and racist by readers. Second, it offers an empirical perspective on the usefulness of the “sanitising” (removing or substituting of all racial slurs) of literary texts with potential racist implications, adopted by some publishing houses and applied to novels like Conrad’s The Nigger of the “Narcissus” and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.