Irony and the Absurd in Joseph Conrad’s “An Outpost of Progress”
Abstract
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to explore the possibility of reading “An Outpost of Progress” (1897), the first fiction where Joseph Conrad deals with Europeans in Africa, through Samuel Beckett’s categories of alienation and the absurd. The perspective opened up by such a comparison can illuminate, I argue, the irony underlying Conrad’s writings, especially as regards his debated attitude towards the Empire, largely based on Heart of Darkness, after Chinua Achebe’s and Edward Said’s critical interventions on it.
DOI:-
Bibliography:
Achebe, Chinua. 1989. An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Hopes and Impediments. Selected Essays. New York: Doubleday, 1-20. Beckett, Samuel. 1957. Murphy. New York: Grove Press.
Beckett, Samuel. 1968. Breath. http://www.samuel-beckett.net/breath.htm, (accessed on 30 June 2013).
Beckett, Samuel. 1970 [1954]. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press.
Beckett, Samuel. 1984. Disjecta. Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment. Ruby Cohn ed. New York: GrovePress.
Bensemmane, M’hamed. 2011. Conrad’s Picture of Irony in “An Outpost of Progress”. Journal of the Short Story in English, 56: 145-152.
Billy, Ted. 1997. A Wilderness of Words. Closure and Disclosure in Conrad’s Short Fiction. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press.
Carabine, Keith. 1997. Introduction. Joseph Conrad. Selected Short Stories.
London: Wordsworth Editions, vii-xxvii.
Clausson, Nils. 2009. “A scrupulous unity of tone”: Irony, Narrative Focus, and the Representation of Africa(ns) in Conrad’s “An Oupost of Progress”. The CEA Critic. An Official Journal of the College English Association, 71, 3: 70-84.
Conrad, Joseph. 1997 [1897]. An Outpost of Progress. Joseph Conrad. Selected Short Stories. London: Wordsworth Editions, 3-23.
Conrad, Joseph. 2006 [1898]. Tales of Unrest. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tales of Unrest. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1202/1202-h/1202-h.htm, (accessed on 1 July 2013).
Hamner, Robert ed. 1990. Joseph Conrad: Third World Perspectives. Washington: Three Continent Press.
Hamner, Robert. 2001. The Enigma of Arrival in “An Outpost of Progress”.
Conradiana, 33, 3 (Fall): 171-187.
Hawthorn, Jeremy. 1990. Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment. London: Edward Arnold.
Hilson, J. C. & D. Timms 1990. Conrad’s “An Outpost of Progress” or the evil spirit of civilization. Robert Hamner ed. Joseph Conrad: Third World Perspectives. Washington: Three Continent Press, 107-116.
Johnson, James M. 1996. Into Africa: “the Black Savages and the White Slaves” in Joseph Conrad’s “An Outpost of Progress”. English Language Notes, 33, 4: 62- 71.
Davis, Laurence. 2005. ‘The Thing Which Was Not and The Thing That Is Also’: Conrad’s Ironic Shadowing. Carola Kaplan, Peter L. Mallios & Andrea White ed. Conrad in the Twenty-first Century. New York-London: Routledge, 223-237.
Kestner, Joseph A. 2010. Masculinities in British Adventure Fiction. 1880-1915. Farnham: Ashgate.
Kuchta, Todd. 2010. Semi-Detatched Empire. Suburbia and the Colonization of Britain. 1880 to the Present. Charlottesville-London: University of Virginia Press.
Lothe, Jakob. 1989. Conrad’s Narrative Method. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Paccaud-Huguet, Josiane. 1996. The master discourse and the irreverent tongue in “An Outpost of Progress”. L’Epoque Conradienne 1996. Actes du Colloque de Lyon II: “Joseph Conrad et la rupture épistémologique”, 22: 93-114.
Said, Edward. 1966. Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.
Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus. Saracino, Maria Antonietta. 1996. Viaggi di carta. Joseph Conrad. Un avamposto del progresso. Cuore di tenebra. Diario del Congo. Milano: Frassinelli,231-267.