The influence of personal motive on the development of the plot concept in the prose of Joseph Conrad (original) (raw)

Narrative Techniques in Joseph Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness”

Narratology is the systematic study of narratives and narrative structures. Vladimir Propp initiated this by his Morphology of the Folktale in 1928. Gerard Genette introduces different analytical categories like narrative mood, narrative instance, narrative level, and narrative time. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness explores the horrible effects of imperialism and racism in Africa. It is written as a frame narrative. This paper analyses the various narrative techniques used by Conrad in developing the story into a narrative.

Cultural aspects of Joseph Conrad´s autobiography. On the digressive structure of Some Reminiscences

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, 2013

In this essay I attempt to analyse Joseph Conrad's 'autobiography'-as it is presented in Some Reminiscences-with particular reference to the enduring cultural patterns that it exhibits. According to the confi gurationist or "culture and personality" approach elaborated by American anthropologists such as Ruth Benedict and Ralph Linton, patterns of behaviour transmitted within particular cultural groups permanently confi gure the personality model of its members both at the level of everyday behaviour and at the level of ideal patterns. This is confi rmed by an analysis of Conrad's autobiography, in which the writer draws on the ideal patterns of the culture of the Polish eastern borderlands (which he acquired during the process of socialization)-not only in order to analyse his own personality, but also to govern his behaviour in completely different cultural contexts. Even more interestingly, these behavioural patterns have confi gured the particular model of the world that is refl ected in the very structure of Conrad's works. In this connection the infl uence of the gawęda or 'Polish nobleman's tale' would seem to be indisputable. It is not so much that Conrad alludes to this literary convention in his autobiographical reminiscences, but rather that he uses it to recreate the model (based on cultural patterns) of the imagination of a Polish nobleman from the eastern borderlands. Moreover, this culturally determined writing strategy is used in Conrad's other works.

JOSEPH CONRAD: A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

Joseph Conrad has been an eminent author of the modern times and his colonial writings do present a critique of the hypocritical nature of European imperialism. Many of his works are highly impressionistic in nature because of their graphic, physical representations of not only the physical landscapes of the colonized world but also the cultural ethos of the different people of those lands. But at the same time, it must not be forgotten that Conrad does probe into the inmost recesses of the characters of his works and make a thorough investigation into the abounding complexities of the human mind. In other words, Conrad‘s works are also psychological treatises where one can trace his insightful probe into the various complex processes that underlie the intricate workings of the human mind.

Uniqueness in the Integration of Setting and Theme in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is one of the finest works in English literature where setting plays a vital role upholding the theme. In this novella none of the themes is explicit in the surface of the story, rather the different themes are encapsulated with the different aspects of the story and one of them is ‘setting’. This study goes on finding the uniqueness in the integration of ‘setting’ and ‘theme’ in this world famous text on colonization and primitiveness.

Penetrating into the Dark: An Archetypal Approach to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2015

The present paper aims at providing an archetypal analysis of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness which in turn gets its most effective impetus from Carl Yung's theory of "collective unconscious". Yung believed that our collective unconscious is a primordial treasure of dreams and myths which we have inherited from the time of our forefathers and which contains the universal themes and images. For him, mythology was a textbook of archetypes, and literature contained the whole dream of mankind. In Heat of Darkness, Joseph Conrad has created a modern myth which decodes the language of the unconscious via some archetypal images. These images depict the contemporary issues of the time both on historical and psychological levels. In a series of archetypal images, which Conrad has delicately selected, organized, and interwoven, the novel represents the deepest inclinations of the universal man as well as his unconscious desires like the desire for quest, for growth, for truth, and for self-recognition. To see how these images mirror the human nature, the present paper attempts to analyze the construction and interrelations of these archetypes.

A signpost for travels with Conrad – recenzja

2007

John Peters’ Introduction to J. Conrad is a well-arranged book devised to navigate a novice through the high seas of Conrad’s fi ction. In a methodical way Peters initiates the newcomer into a vast fi eld of knowledge and scholarship called Conradian canon and Conradian studies. Appropriately, the overview commences with Conrad’s biography. Peters emphasizes the links between the writer’s life and his work. He carefully points at the events from Conrad’s life and connects them with various novels or stories. Yet, he does not chart the biographical and the fictional areas as ideally overlapping, rather signals the tangent points. The general pattern of the first twenty years of Conrad’s writing career that emerges from the opening chapter is agonizing: distressful time of composing a literary piece, uncertainty about the value of the produced work, wrestling with the scope and length of a given piece (the subject/story virtually “taking the reins of” the author), generally favourable...

A Reading of Joseph Conrad's The Tale

International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, 2013

The Tale is a short story by Joseph Conrad. Typical of a Conrad story it is set at sea. The sea is symbolic of the unconscious and this story may be read as a story of the unconscious. On the outside, it seems simple; a man tells a woman a tale of the commanding officer of a patrol ship who gives false directions to another ship and sends it to its doom. In between the lines of the seemingly simple plot, however, can be read another tale; one which speaks of a human sea deeper than the sea of water; deeper, darker, and infinitely more mysterious. Man has navigated the sea of water but the unfathomed sea of his own being remains, for the most part, undiscovered. This is a sea different from the sea of this world and Conrad sets sail on it by telling a tale from another world. Sailing with Conrad, the reader can look out on the infinite vastness and try to form a picture of the infinite depth of a sea which is not visible to the human eye.