Heart of Darkness

by Conrad, Joseph; Goonetilleke, D. C. R. A.

• ISBN13: 9781551113074
• ISBN10: 1551113074
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-12-01
• Publisher: Broadview Pr

Summary

"Heart of Darkness" grew out of a journey Joseph Conrad took up the Congo River; the verisimilitude that the great novelist thereby brought to his most famous tale everywhere enhances its dense and shattering power. Apparently a sailor's yarn, it is in fact a grim parody of the adventure story, in which the narrator, Marlow, travels deep into the heart of the Congo where he encounters the crazed idealist Kurtz and discovers that the relative values of the civilized and the primitive are not what they seem. "Heart of Darkness" is a model of economic storytelling, an indictment of the inner and outer turmoil caused by the European imperial misadventure, and a piercing account of the fragility of the human soul.

Table of Contents

Preface	7	(9)
Introduction	9	(39)
A Note on the Text	48	(2)
Select Bibliography	50	(1)
A Joseph Conrad Chronology	51	(2)
A Congo Chronology	53	(3)
Author's Note (Preface to the 1923 edition of Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories)	56	(3)
Heart of Darkness	59	(90)
Appendix A: Comments by Conrad	149	(14)
Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews	163	(11)
Appendix C: Historical Documents	174	(65)
Appendix D: Major Textual Changes	239	(6)
Appendix E: Illustrations	245	(5)
Appendix F: The Photographs of Alice Harris	250	(8)
Appendix G: Map of the Congo	258