Home Literary Studies 6. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899/1902)
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6. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899/1902)

  • Russell West-Pavlov
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Handbook of the English Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
This chapter is in the book Handbook of the English Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract

Heart of Darkness, the best-known work by the Polish-born, British-sailor turned avantgarde novelist Joseph Conrad, has become an iconic representative of High Modernism because it typifies, within the space of less than a hundred pages, the modernist movement’s all-out assault on all the conventions of the nineteenth-century realist novel: linear narrative plot-construction; the conventions of the omniscient extradiegetic or ‘reliable’ first-person autodiegetic narrator; the rationality and self-knowledge of subjectivity that both those narrative conventions and their accompanying characters presuppose; the transparency of literary descriptive semiotics as a reflector of a stable exterior reality, projected into the underpinning notion of ‘setting’; and the framing influence of a set of civilized Enlightenment values that the combination of all these literary devices was supposed to convey and buttress. Conrad’s fundamental concern is the issue of how we narrate (poetics) as the key to the issue of how we know (epistemology), which in turn becomes the condition of how we act (ethics, agency), one of these actions of course being the practice of narrative. Narrative itself, beyond all questions of the moral content, becomes a means of structuring human existence within a universe stripped of ultimate guarantees of meaning. Rather, it is in the reception of narrative, which Conrad integrates into the very structure of his novella, that meanings lacking any ethical underpinning except their own narrative dynamic are produced and performed.

Abstract

Heart of Darkness, the best-known work by the Polish-born, British-sailor turned avantgarde novelist Joseph Conrad, has become an iconic representative of High Modernism because it typifies, within the space of less than a hundred pages, the modernist movement’s all-out assault on all the conventions of the nineteenth-century realist novel: linear narrative plot-construction; the conventions of the omniscient extradiegetic or ‘reliable’ first-person autodiegetic narrator; the rationality and self-knowledge of subjectivity that both those narrative conventions and their accompanying characters presuppose; the transparency of literary descriptive semiotics as a reflector of a stable exterior reality, projected into the underpinning notion of ‘setting’; and the framing influence of a set of civilized Enlightenment values that the combination of all these literary devices was supposed to convey and buttress. Conrad’s fundamental concern is the issue of how we narrate (poetics) as the key to the issue of how we know (epistemology), which in turn becomes the condition of how we act (ethics, agency), one of these actions of course being the practice of narrative. Narrative itself, beyond all questions of the moral content, becomes a means of structuring human existence within a universe stripped of ultimate guarantees of meaning. Rather, it is in the reception of narrative, which Conrad integrates into the very structure of his novella, that meanings lacking any ethical underpinning except their own narrative dynamic are produced and performed.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Editors’ Preface V
  3. Contents VII
  4. 0. Introduction 1
  5. Part I. Systematic Questions
  6. 1. The English Novel as a Distinctly Modern Genre 23
  7. 2. The Novel in the Economy, 1900 to the Present 42
  8. 3. Genres: The Novel between Artistic Ambition and Popularity 64
  9. 4. Gender: Performing Politics in Prose? Performativity – Masculinity – Feminism – Queer 82
  10. 5. The Burden of Representation: Reflections on Class, Ethnicity and the Twentieth-Century British Novel 107
  11. Part II. Close Readings
  12. 6. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899/1902) 133
  13. 7. James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) 152
  14. 8. E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924) 175
  15. 9. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927) 195
  16. 10. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932) 213
  17. 11. Henry Green, Party Going (1939) 232
  18. 12. Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable (1951–1958) 252
  19. 13. Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956) 268
  20. 14. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962) 288
  21. 15. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) 303
  22. 16. B. S. Johnson, The Unfortunates (1969) 323
  23. 17. J. G. Farrell, The Empire Trilogy (1970–1978) 344
  24. 18. William Golding, Darkness Visible (1979) 365
  25. 19. Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (1984) 384
  26. 20. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988) 403
  27. 21. Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry (1989) 424
  28. 22. A. S. Byatt, Possession (1990) 445
  29. 23. Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials (1995–2000) 461
  30. 24. Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000) 481
  31. 25. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004) 498
  32. 26. China Miéville, Embassytown (2011) 518
  33. 27. Hilary Mantel, The Thomas Cromwell Trilogy (2009–) 536
  34. 28. Tom McCarthy, Satin Island (2015) 555
  35. Index of Subjects 575
  36. Index of Names 592
  37. List of Contributors 603
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110369489-007

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Editors’ Preface V
  3. Contents VII
  4. 0. Introduction 1
  5. Part I. Systematic Questions
  6. 1. The English Novel as a Distinctly Modern Genre 23
  7. 2. The Novel in the Economy, 1900 to the Present 42
  8. 3. Genres: The Novel between Artistic Ambition and Popularity 64
  9. 4. Gender: Performing Politics in Prose? Performativity – Masculinity – Feminism – Queer 82
  10. 5. The Burden of Representation: Reflections on Class, Ethnicity and the Twentieth-Century British Novel 107
  11. Part II. Close Readings
  12. 6. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899/1902) 133
  13. 7. James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) 152
  14. 8. E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924) 175
  15. 9. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927) 195
  16. 10. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932) 213
  17. 11. Henry Green, Party Going (1939) 232
  18. 12. Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable (1951–1958) 252
  19. 13. Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956) 268
  20. 14. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962) 288
  21. 15. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) 303
  22. 16. B. S. Johnson, The Unfortunates (1969) 323
  23. 17. J. G. Farrell, The Empire Trilogy (1970–1978) 344
  24. 18. William Golding, Darkness Visible (1979) 365
  25. 19. Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (1984) 384
  26. 20. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988) 403
  27. 21. Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry (1989) 424
  28. 22. A. S. Byatt, Possession (1990) 445
  29. 23. Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials (1995–2000) 461
  30. 24. Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000) 481
  31. 25. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004) 498
  32. 26. China Miéville, Embassytown (2011) 518
  33. 27. Hilary Mantel, The Thomas Cromwell Trilogy (2009–) 536
  34. 28. Tom McCarthy, Satin Island (2015) 555
  35. Index of Subjects 575
  36. Index of Names 592
  37. List of Contributors 603
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