Images Of Africa In Conrad’s Novels

Conrad’s novels, especially his African novels with Heart of Darkness as the representative work which helps him become world-renowned and receive a number of awards, are very popular with readers. Many scholars at home and abroad have been studying his African novels, and have made some achievements. However, there still exist some considerable research areas:first, the former research on African images in Conrad’s novels just revolves around Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, seldom refers to An Outpost of Progress, and rarely puts the two novels together to study the images of Africa in his novels from the macro perspective; second, the current research on the images of Africa in Conrad’s novels focuses on the African characters, and these characters are too general, neglecting the differences among them; third, the former research fails to study the other images of Africa in Conrad’s novels, such as African environmental images and African cultural images; fourth, the research perspective is relatively single, failing to study the images of Africa in Conrad’s novels by combining macro perspective with micro text analysis.In view of this, based on Conrad’s two African novels and taking both Conrad’s historical background and his special personal experiences into consideration, this paper systematically studies the images of Africa in Conrad’s novels by the research method of combining macro perspective with micro analysis, in order to draw a more objective conclusion. This is helpful to give a more rational evaluation on Conrad and promote the current communication and cooperation between China and Africa. This paper consists of five parts:The first part is introduction. It reviews the research at home and abroad about the images of Africa in Conrad’s novels, finds out the weak points of previous studies, and introduces the research purpose, research significance and research methods.The second part is the first chapter of this paper. This chapter not only introduces the social background such as the European political and economic status, social Darwinism, exclusive literary Empire romance and the situation of Congo, but also outlines Conrad’s personal experiences, such as his trip to Congo and sailing experiences.The third part is the second chapter of this paper. In this chapter, the African characters in Conrad’s novels are divided into two categories:"undomesticated" African characters and "domesticated" African images. Then these two kinds of characters are subdivided into the African primitive tribe, African "cannibals", African workers, African leaders, and black fireman, helmsman, Makola, African mistress respectively for further research.The fourth part is the third chapter of this paper. This chapter first analyzes the African environmental images in Conrad’s novels, including African rivers, wilderness, diseases, and white fog, and then studies the African cultural images in the novels, mainly related to the African religious rituals, African dance, African music, African costumes and customs, etc.The fifth part is the fourth chapter of this paper. Based on this research, this chapter provides the following enlightenment:the enlightenment of the diversification of Conrad’s African images, the enlightenment of the evaluation on Conrad, and the enlightenment of the communication between China and Africa.