Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: A Casebook (Casebooks in Criticism) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195159969 ISBN 13: 9780195159967

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

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 also represented, 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 a Mississippi pilot.

About this title

About the Author:

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

Review:

"A clearly written, well documented, and informative account."--Politics and Religion

"Moore has assembled something new and valuable, deliberately avoiding some of the usually anthologized material while pushing the boundaries of critical commentary.... Not only are all of the selected works provocative and substantive in their own way, each inviting us to reconsider the text's contexts and our own assumptions, so too the collection as a whole--by juxtaposing historical tidbit and serious study, theoretical meditation and comic relief--brims with a life which will gratify the hungry curiosity of the general reader and prompt the more reticent student to exclaim, 'Cool!'"--Joseph Conrad Today

"[Moore] offers a casebook that contains judiciously selected contextualizing materials, a range of critical approaches to Conrad, and materials not readily available in other competing texts. Above all, the collection is very readable and will be accessible to a wide audience.... It offers useful teaching materials for the college classroom; and it provides advanced students and scholars of Conrad with new materials that have only recently come to light. It is a most welcome volume."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0195159969
• ISBN 13: 9780195159967
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Moore Gene M.