Heart of Darkness (For Further Study)

For Further Study

• Peter J. Glassman, Language and Being: Joseph Conrad and the Literature of Personality, Colombia University Press, 1976.

  Chapter 6 develops a philosophically tinged argument about the relation between language and death in Heart of Darkness.

• Eloise Knapp Hay, The Political Novels of Joseph Conrad, Chicago University Press, 1963, pp. 107-161.

  The author relates the political component of Heart of Darkness to its stylistic techniques.

• Douglas Hewitt, Conrad: A Reassessment, Bowes, 1952.

  Chapter 2 treats Heart of Darkness together with the other early tales which also have Marlow as their narrator.

• Stephen K. Land, Paradox and Polarity in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, St. Martin's Press, 1984.

  A 311-page book in which Stephen Land takes a critical look at several of Conrad's works, including Heart of Darkness and Nostromo. Land pays particular attention to an examination of the Conradian hero.

• Bernard Meyer, Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography, Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 168-184.

  Chapter 9 deals with Heart of Darkness within the book's broader project of a psychoanalytic reading of the relation between Conrad's life and his fiction.

• Benita Parry, Conrad and Imperialism, Macmillan, 1983, pp. 20-39.

  The author develops an argument about Conrad's ambiguous relation to European colonialism. Chapter 2 treats Heart of Darkness directly.

• Norman Sherry, Conrad: The Critical Heritage, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.

  A collection of contemporary reviews of Conrad's work. Contains ten reviews of Heart of Darkness.

• Bruce E. Teets and Helmut E. Gerber, Joseph Conrad, An Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him, Northern Illinois University Press, 1971.

  An extremely useful bibliography of Conrad criticism, from contemporary reviews to later critical studies and articles.

• Cedric Watts, A Preface to Conrad, Longman, 1982.

  Explains the themes that recur in Conrad's work. More generally about Conrad's ideas than a reading of Heart of Darkness or any single work of his.