Conrad's Heart of Darkness

(Paperback)

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Reader's Guides provide a comprehensive starting point for any advanced student, giving an overview of the context, criticism and influence of key works. Each guide also offers students fresh critical insights and provides a practical introduction to close reading and to analysing literary language and form. They provide up-to-date, authoritative but accessible guides to the most commonly studied classic texts.

Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness (1902), is a key text in the development of modernism and one of the most important literary works of the early twentieth century. This guide provides an invaluable introduction to reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness and includes sections on its contexts, language and style, critical reception and literary and film adaptations, including Coppola's Apocalypse Now,and finally an annotated guide to further reading.

Reviews

"Allan Simmons then takes you straight into an analysis of the story via his consideration of Conrad's use of English (which was his third language) his narrator Marlow, and his use of the novella as a literary form... ...A level students and undergraduates will find his analyses of the details thought-provoking - and the process should lead them towards the complexities of investigation they might be making on their own behalf. At the same time, anyone teaching the novella will find his approach useful...In the two final chapters Simmons traces Conrad's reputation as a writer from the publication of Heart of Darkness to the present, then he looks at the adaptations - nearly ninety films and even a piano concerto...There is still interpretive work to be done on many aspects of Conrad - not least his attitude to women - but works such as this help to provide the means whereby this work will be done." - Roy Johnson, mantex.co.uk, 2007
"An overview of the novel Heart of Darkness joins others in Continuum's Character Studies' series and offers discussions of the narrative structure and narrators key to the text's reading. High school to college-level students of Conrad will find this a powerful exploration of the themes and ideas of this classic text, and a must' for comprehensive study." -The Literary Shelf (Bookwatch), January 2009

Author Bio

ALLAN SIMMONS is Reader in English Literature at St. Mary's College, University of Surrey, UK.