| These pages are intended for students studying Conrad's fiction or for those seeking general guidance to some sources on a given work.
- Information on "Heart of Darkness" is found below.
- Brief guides to Lord
Jim, The Secret Agent,
and "The Secret Sharer" are available here.
HEART OF DARKNESS
The novella was written between autumn 1898 and February 1899
while Conrad was working on Lord
Jim and blocked on The
Rescue. In late December, Conrad wrote to his publisher
to explain that:
"It is a narrative after the manner of [Y]outh told by the
same man dealing with his experiences on a river in Central Africa.
The idea in it is not as obvious as in {Y]outh – or at least
not so obviously presented. … The title I am thinking of
is 'The Heart of Darkness' but the narrative is not gloomy. The
criminality of inefficiency and pure selfishness when tackling
the civilising work in Africa is a justifiable idea. The subject
is of our time distinc[t]ly – though not topically treated." (Collected
Letters 2: 139-40).
The tale was finished in February and the serial
version appeared in the conservative Blackwood’s
Magazine, under the title "The Heart of Darkness"
(title changed for book version) between February and April 1899.
It was published in volume form as one of the three stories in the
collection Youth: A Narrative,
and Two Other Stories (1902).
The Critical Response: Introductory Works
Heart of Darkness
has become one of the most widely read works by Conrad. It has provoked
controversy for its depiction of Africa and Africans and its perspective
on women. Its sources in Conrad’s own experiences have been
exhaustively studied and its literary antecedents have been relentlessly
hunted out.
It has proved a creative stimulus to other
artists, inspiring John Powell’s composition for piano and
orchestra Rhapsodie nègre
(1917), T. S. Eliot’s The
Waste Land (1922) and "The Hollow Men" (1925),
Graham Greene’s A Burnt Out
Case (1961), and V. S. Naipaul’s A
Bend in the River (1979). Francis Ford Coppola drew on the
novella for his Vietnam film Apocalypse
Now (1979).
The bewildering variety of critical approaches that the novel has
generated can be confusing for first time readers. Among the best
starting points is Ian Watt’s chapter in Conrad
in the Nineteenth Century (1979) which offers an overview
of the story’s origins, aesthetic, and political concerns.
Norman Sherry’s Conrad’s
Western World (1971) provides a wealth of detail on the historical
background. Robert Kimbrough’s Norton Critical Edition (1988)
of the novella includes a convenient selection of background and
source information along with extracts from major critical studies.
This Norton volume has been updated and revised, a 4th edition being
edited by Paul B. Armstrong (2005). Heart
of Darkness: A Casebook, ed. Gene M. Moore (2004) provides
material for contextualizing the story and suggests lines of approach.
There are useful surveys of the early critical
response to the story in Bruce Harkness, ed., Conrad’s
"Heart of Darkness" and the Critics (1960) whilst
Robert Burden’s "Heart
of Darkness": An Introduction to the Variety of Criticism
(1991) provides a concise survey of the novella’s critical
fortunes from publication to the late 1980s. This work is complemented
by the fuller but less readable study by Nicolas Tredell, Joseph
Conrad: "Heart of Darkness" (1998). D. C. R. A.
Goonetilleke's Routledge Guide to Literature, Joseph Conrad's
Heart of Darkness (2007) offers a thoroughgoing discussion
of the novella's critical fortunes since its publication as well
as five essays on the text.
Harold Bloom, ed., Joseph
Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness" (1987) provides
extracts from major studies along with a selection of modern responses.
Ross Murfin, ed., Joseph Conrad:
"Heart of Darkness": A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism
(1989) outlines some major theoretical approaches to the text. Keith
Carabine, ed., Joseph Conrad: Critical
Assessments: Vol. 2 (1992) provides full text reprints of
some major essays from the 1970s to 1990s, with a particular focus
on post colonial issues.
Africa & Africans in "Heart of
Darkness"
In a 1975 lecture the African writer Chinua
Achebe famously denounced the novella, arguing that in its depiction
of Africa and Africans Conrad was revealed as a "thoroughgoing
racist" (revised version of ‘An Image of Africa’,
reprinted in Carabine, ed., 2: 393-404) first published in The
Massachusetts Review, 18.4 (Winter 1977): 782-94, in which
Achebe calls Conrad "a bloody racist." The essay has provoked
much debate, including responses by Cedric Watts (available in Carabine,
ed., 2: 405-18), Wilson Harris, and Francis B. Singh (reprinted
in Kimbrough, ed. 1988: 262-68, 268-85).
For an account of Conrad’s representation of imperialism
see, among others, Benita Parry, Conrad
and Imperialism (1983) and Andrea White Joseph
Conrad and the Adventure Tradition (1993).
Conrad & Modernism
The novella’s place in the development of English Modernism
has been another fruitful topic of critical debate. There is a
concise survey of work in this field in Burden (op. cit., 35-44)
and Kenneth Graham’s essay on ‘Conrad and Modernism'
in J. H. Stape, ed., The Cambridge
Companion to Joseph Conrad (1996), pp. 203-22, and his study
of Indirections of the Novel:
James, Conrad and Forster (1990) covers the topic in some
detail.
Other work on this subject includes:
- Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth
Century (1979)
- Allon White, The Uses of Obscurity:
The Fictions of Early Modernism (1981)
- J. Hillis-Miller, Poets of
Reality (1985)
- Edward Said, The World, the
Text and the Critic (1983)
- Michael Levenson, Modernism
and the Fate of Individuality (1991)
- Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph
Conrad and the Modern Temper (1991)
- Heart of Darkness, edited by D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke
(3rd edition 2007)
- Con Coroneos, Space, Conrad,
and Modernity (2002)
- Allan H. Simmons, Conrad's
"Heart of Darkness": A Reader's Guide (2007)
- Nicholas Tredell, ed., Joseph Conrad: "Heart of Darkness":
Essays, Articles, Reviews (2000)
Gender Issues in "Heart of Darkness"
Questions of the novella’s representation
of women were forcefully raised by Nina Pelikan Strauss in "The
Exclusion of the Intended from Secret Sharing in 'Heart of Darkness,'"Novel,
20.2 (Winter 1987): 123-27. This powerful reading generated a new
vein of critical inquiry that includes:
- Peter Hyland, ‘The Little Woman in “Heart of Darkness,”’ Conradiana,
20 (1988): 1-11.
- Joanna Smith, ‘“Too beautiful altogether”: Patriarchal
Ideology in “Heart of Darkness”’ in Murfin, ed., A
Case Study in Contemporary Criticism (1989), pp.179-95.
- Ruth Nadelhaft, Joseph Conrad (1991).
- Padmini Mongia, ‘Empire, Narrative and the Feminine in
Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness’ in Carabine et al, eds.,
Contexts for Conrad (1993).
Some Web Links for "Heart
of Darkness"
"Heart of Darkness" Manuscript Online
Yale University's Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library has digitized the surviving
manuscript of the novella. Click on the link here and go to the
Digital Images Online section of the menu.
"Heart of Darkness" Discussion
The following link is to an mp3 file with a 45- minute discussion
of the novella by Lord Bragg with Dr Susan Jones, Professor Robert
Hampson, and Dr Laurence Davies.
The discussion was broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Melyvn
Bragg: In our Time" on 15 February 2007. RealPlayerAudio must
be installed on your computer in order to access this discussion.
Click here for the file: In
Our Time
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