HENRY RIDER HAGGARD AND THE HERMENEUTICS OF SUSPICION IN AN AGE OF CONFUSION
HENRY RIDER HAGGARD AND THE HERMENEUTICS OF SUSPICION IN AN AGE OF CONFUSION

Summary/Abstract: ‘Modernity’ dissolved religious tradition and increased spiritual anarchy in thought and action in the late nineteenth century. In this highly scientific age, the emerging theoretical works of Marx, Engels, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud on god, race, evolution, class struggle, and the human spirit, unsurprisingly produced the first deliriums of modern man. People in such an environment lost their sense of security and their lives could no longer assure spiritual serenity. As a milestone of the late Nineteenth Century, Nietzsche in The Gay Science obviously proclaimed that God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Therefore, standing amidst the clash between Victorian romanticism and twentieth-century scepticism, Henry Rider Haggard seems to have been affected by the confusions of his era. Therefore, the primary goal of this article is to clarify in what ways the British Africanist H. R. Haggard was affected by the winds of change occurred in his time (1856-1925) and how he represented the discourse of ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion” in his works.

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