Colonial and Postcolonial Rewritings of "Heart of Darkness": A Century of Dialogue with Joseph Conrad - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Joseph Conrad’s novella "Heart of Darkness" (1899) is taught and read allover the world. Everywhere, novelists and travel writers respond to it intheir own creative work. I discuss 30 responses, or rewritings, from Africa,India, the Caribbean, Australia, Europe and the US. Their perspectivesinclude those of groups who identify with Conrad’s Europeans and groups whofeel close to his Africans, and increasingly those of groups who situatethemselves between these two extremes in various ways. I identify world-widedevelopments as well as themes, strategies and paradigm shifts thatcorrelate with different geopolitical situations. Rewriters address thecontribution Conrad has made to the identities of his very differentreaders, and the patterns he has suggested for encounters. In ever moreintense dialogues, people from all backgrounds work through images ofthemselves and of each other. However, like Conrad’s narrator, they alsobecome aware of limits of language and communication.Rewriters act as rereaders of the many layers of meaning in "Heart ofDarkness", and thus imply that the reader’s experience is as important asthe author’s. This approach is increasingly developing into a use ofdiscourse-analytical methods in non-theoretical texts. Rewritings can bring"Heart of Darkness" close to the readers’ lives. Rewriters championprocesses of highly personal learning and unlearning as well as politicaland social approaches, and can thus help readers rework their own culturalbackgrounds. Accordingly, I both use close-reading methods and take intoaccount political and didactic intentions. In conclusion, I recommendreading "Heart of Darkness" together with one or more of its rewritings, andoutline some ideas for teaching such combinations.After comprehensive introductions to "Heart of Darkness" and to the theoryof rewritings, I discuss works by the following authors in a convenienthandbook format: Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer), Leonard Woolf, W. SomersetMaugham, Andre Gide, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Graham Greene, Charlotte Jay,Patrick White, Chinua Achebe, Wilson Harris, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Tayeb Salih,Arun Joshi, J.M. Coetzee, V.S. Naipaul, Robert Silverberg, Caryl Phillips,David Dabydeen, Marlene NourbeSe Philip, David Malouf, Mineke Schipper,Abdulrazak Gurnah, Urs Widmer, Redmond O’Hanlon, Arundhati Roy, BarbaraKingsolver and Jeffrey Tayler.

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