| Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is an important writer of the British literature in the late 19th and early 20th century. Many of his works are reputed as classics in the history of English literature. Heart of Darkness firstly appeared in series in the then well-known literary magazine Blackwood's Magazine in 1899. In 1902, it was published in Conrad's Youth volume with other two stories. Since its appearance, Heart of Darkness has caught wide attention from the public. Moreover, it has retained its position as one of the frequently studied novels among the Conradian canons.Before starting his literary life, Conrad had experienced approximately twenty years in sea-sailing life, which greatly inspired his literary creations. Heart of Darkness, to some extent, is based on his six-month Congo experience in the period between June and December in 1890. The novel is primarily "a tale within a tale." Numerous critics found the value of the novel, and studied the novel from a variety of aspects. Among these critical assessments, most critics paid attention to the analysis of its characters, plots, themes, subjects and other profound aspects such as its philosophical, moral, ethical, racial as well as its impressionist implications. Regretfully, little systematic research has been done on the impressionism in Heart of Darkness, though some scholars have showed interests in it and slightly touched the effects of impressionism in researches relating to Conrad's works. Therefore, inadequacy of researches in this field provides a possible direction for this study.This thesis focuses on three aspects of impressionism in Heart of Darkness with a view to make a relatively comprehensive interpretation of impressionism in the novel. Specifically, this thesis studies the impressionist sensibility, impressionist narratives, and impressionist temporality in Heart of Darkness. This thesis ultimately aims to demonstrate that Heart of Darkness is an impressionist novel that shows certain important aspects of Conrad's impressionism as well as literary impressionism as a whole.This thesis consists of six parts, with four chapters coming between the introduction and the conclusion.The first part is the introduction. The background information of Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, and theory of impressionism are introduced in this part, which proves that it is feasible to interpret this novel from the perspective of impressionism. In addition, this part also introduces the main plot of Heart of Darkness, the question, the purpose, the methodology of the study.Chapter one consists of the introduction of theoretical basis and literature review. This chapter first introduces the concept of impressionism in painting and impressionism in literature (also known as literary impressionism). Besides these introductions, definition of literary impressionism, main aesthetic values and features of literary impressionism and Joseph Conrad's artistic views on impressionism are also introduced in this part. After the introduction of theories is the literature review of studies on impressionism and literary impressionism, and studies on Heart of Darkness. All of these studies provide a solid foundation for this thesis and inspire the writing of this thesis.Chapter two concentrates on the impressionist sensibility in Heart of Darkness. This chapter studies the impressionist visual aspects including color, light and other images, Conrad's resorting to other senses besides visual ones in order to form impressionistic atmosphere by the combining effects of these aspects. By studying these aspects in the novel, this part endeavors to prove that impressionist sensibility in Heart of Darkness not only demonstrates Conrad's artistic views of "make you see" (Conrad, Preface 6), but also illustrates his efforts to arouse the sensory perceptions of readers in order to achieve his goal of reaching "secret spring of responsive emotions" (Conrad, Preface 6), thus leading readers to reach the profound aesthetic experience of the novel.Chapter three focuses on the analysis of impressionist narratives in Heart of Darkness. Unique narrative method is valued as an indispensable part to impressionism in literature. This part studies three narrative techniques in Heart of Darkness-the limited narration, the multi-perspective narrative and the narrative technique of "delayed decoding". Analysis on the impressionist narrative techniques in Heart of Darkness aims at demonstrating that first, Joseph Conrad's application of limited narration and the multi-perspective narratives in the novel produce an effect that "make you hear" (Conrad, Preface 6) the different voices in the story in order to allow you to form a relatively complete impression about actions, events, characters in the novel from different angles and through various fragmented impressions; and second, narrative technique of "delayed decoding" is used in the construction of the plot, characters and events in the story, which suspends the effects of impressions on his narrators and readers, and leads them to form an impressionist picture of the whole story. Moreover, this part also points out that by employing these narrative techniques in Heart of Darkness, Conrad revealed his skeptical views toward human being's acquisition of the absolute truth of the universe.Chapter four explores the impressionist temporality in Heart of Darkness. Two main characteristics of impressionist temporality are studied, namely, juxtaposition of mechanical time and human time and emphasis on capturing the fleeting impression in a contextualized moment, both of which help to produce temporality in obtaining an impression of the reality. By exploring the impressionist temporality in Heart of Darkness, this part proves that Conrad created the plot and events in the novel through a series of fragmented impressions that obtained in a particular time and place. Moreover, the emphasis on impressionist temporality demonstrates Conrad's value of the epistemology of subjectivity.In the last part, the thesis concludes that Heart of Darkness is really an impressionist masterpiece. Joseph Conrad used impressionist techniques in Heart of Darkness including emphasis on impressionist sensibility, application of impressionist narrative techniques, and application of the impressionist temporality-all of which contributed to making the novel an impressive impressionist novel. |
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