Heart Of Darkness Seminararbeit

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Department für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
WS 2012/13
Proseminar : „Imagining Africa in 18th and 19th century British literature“
Dozentin: Dr. Sarah Fekadu

Thema der Seminararbeit:

Heart of Darkness and the ambivalence of imperialism

Silvia Gerlsbeck
Alfred-Schmidt-Str. 30
81379 München
Email: [e-mail]
Telefon: [phone]
Matrikelnummer: 10359120
Studiengang: Lehramt Gymnasium, Fächer Deutsch, Englisch, EWS
5. Fachsemester

Table of contents

1.

2.

3.

Introduction ............................................................................................................ 3
1.1

Postcolonial reception of Heart of Darkness ........................................... 3

1.2

Guiding question ...................................................................................... 3

Ambivalences resulting from narrative aspects .............................................. 4
2.1

Characteristics of narrative form .............................................................. 4

2.2

Marlow - an unreliable narrator? .............................................................. 7

Ambivalences through imagery .......................................................................... 9
3.1

Symbolism in landscape portrayal ........................................................... 9

3.2

Visual and aural ambiguities .................................................................. 11

4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 14

5. Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 16
5.1 Primary Literature ....................................................................................... 16
5.2 Secondary Literature ................................................................................... 16

6.

Bibliography: Ashour, Radwa. 1983. “Significant incongruities in Conrad 's Heart of darkness“. Brooks, Peter. 1984. Reading for the Plot. Design and Intention in Narrative. Goonetilleke, D. C. R. A. 2007. Joseph Conrad 's ‘Heart of Darkness’. Abingdon, New York: Routledge. Neumann, Birgit and Ansgar Nünning. 2008. An Introduction to the Study of Narrative Fiction Pallua, Ulrich. 2004. Africa’s Transition from Colonisation to Independence and Decolonisation: Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, Chinua Achebe’s Poppe, Sandra. 2007. “Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux – Darkness als visuelles Leitmotiv”. Valdez Moses, Michael. 2007. "Disorientalism: Conrad and the Imperial Origins of Modernist Aesthetics." Modernism and Colonialism: British and Irish Literature, 1899-1939. Ed. Richard Begam and Michael Valdez Moses.