David Dabydeen’s The Intended (1991) and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise (1994) are two postcolonial bildungsromane that ‘write back’ to Heart of Darkness on many issues raised by Marlow’s voyage into the Congo – the travel into the unknown, colonial forms of subordination and the corrupting effect of trade on inter-ethnic relations. These fictional responses also seem to be highly theory-informed on the debate around Conrad’s work, hinting at critical perspectives on Heart such as Reader-response criticism, Deconstruction, New Historicism and, of course, Postcolonial Studies; in doing so, they contribute to the notorious controversy about Conrad’s Eurocentric vs anticolonial perspective by way of fiction. Finally, this textual analysis of the two novels aims at showing how they could be seen as ways of elaborating on the contemporary urgency of Heart, especially in their development of issues such as multiculturalism, the approach to the literary canon and the continuing ruthless exploitation of the Congo area.
Dark Paradises: David Dabydeen's and Abdulrazak Gurnah's Postcolonial Rewritings of "Heart of Darkness"
DEANDREA, Pietro
2009-01-01
Abstract
David Dabydeen’s The Intended (1991) and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise (1994) are two postcolonial bildungsromane that ‘write back’ to Heart of Darkness on many issues raised by Marlow’s voyage into the Congo – the travel into the unknown, colonial forms of subordination and the corrupting effect of trade on inter-ethnic relations. These fictional responses also seem to be highly theory-informed on the debate around Conrad’s work, hinting at critical perspectives on Heart such as Reader-response criticism, Deconstruction, New Historicism and, of course, Postcolonial Studies; in doing so, they contribute to the notorious controversy about Conrad’s Eurocentric vs anticolonial perspective by way of fiction. Finally, this textual analysis of the two novels aims at showing how they could be seen as ways of elaborating on the contemporary urgency of Heart, especially in their development of issues such as multiculturalism, the approach to the literary canon and the continuing ruthless exploitation of the Congo area.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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