Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness A Casebook

by Moore, Gene M.

• ISBN13: 9780195303698
• ISBN10: 0195303695
• Copyright: 2010-04-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's fictional account of a journey up the Congo river in 1890, raises important questions about colonialism and narrative theory. This casebook contains materials relevant to a deeper understanding of the origins and reception of this controversial text, including Conrad's own story "An Outpost of Progress," together with a little-known memoir by one of Conrad's oldest English friends, a brief history of the Congo Free State by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a parody of Conrad by Max Beerbohm. A wide range of theoretical approaches are alsorepresented, examining Conrad's text in terms of cultural, historical, textual, stylistic, narratological, post-colonial, feminist, and reader-response criticism. The volume concludes with an interview in which Conrad compares his adventures on the Congo with Mark Twain's experiences as aMississippi pilot.

Author Biography

Gene M. Moore is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

Introduction

An Outpost of Progress

Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the Dark Continent

From The Crime of the Congo

Joseph Conrad's First Cruise in the Nellie

To the End of the Night

The Typescript of ""The Heart of Darkness""

The Feast, by J*s*ph C*nr*d

Conrad's Impressionism

Narratological Parallels in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now

The Exclusion of the Intended from Secret Sharing in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness Revisited: The African Response

Jungle Fever

A Chat with Joseph Conrad

Suggested Reading

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.