Studying Heart of Darkness

ELT: Volume 33:1, 1990 Though it does what it announces it will do, this dissertation (University of Chicago, 1967) becomes more pedestrian as it proceeds, with a heavy pattern of awkward transitions—"let us begin," "I intend to use," "we shall see," and so on—all too often, particularly in a study which purports to reach its conclusions by analysis of stylistic change. It would be kind to believe that the fault, perhaps, lay in the demands of his dissertation advisors to make the point often and obviously. Much scholarship has been expended on Wilde and particularly on Dorian Gray since this study was completed, yet no item in its bibliography dates beyond 1967. Thorough as Lawler's approach demonstrates itself to be, one can only wonder what its value today can be, what audience it may reach post-Ellmann—except possibly to Ph.D. candidates writing other dissertations on Wilde. Garland Press should perhaps reassess its motives in continuing to add unaltered, outdated dissertations to its series of critical studies of English and American literature. Such items would seem more appropriate in the lists of vanity presses than in the productions of a major printing house which normally provides desireable but otherwise inaccessible works. For those who truly want or need them, reprints of unrevised dissertations may be obtained from Xerox University Microfilms. Thomas C. Ware University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Studying Heart of Darkness Ross C Murfin, ed. Joseph Conrad 'Heart of Darkness': A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism. New York: Bedford Books, St. Martin's Press, 1989. 270 pp. $29.95 THIS VOLUME IS THE FIRST in Bedford Books's projected series of casebooks offering contemporary critical views of selected canonical works. It gives the reader the 1921 Heinemann text of Conrad's novel, "together with five critical essays specially commissioned to interpret Heart of Darkness for a student audience" (cover blurb). The idea of presenting concrete applications of psychoanalytic, readerresponse , feminist, deconstructive and new historical criticism for students in an undergraduate or graduate criticism course is timely and welcome, and on the whole Ross Murfin has made a good job of it. Murfin has performed the technical side of his editorial work with care; and his own contributions to the volume are usually excellent . Although the text οι Heart of Darkness is not annotated, and the 112 Book Reviews book unfortunately has no index, the "Glossary of Critical and Theoretical Terms" is a plus. Each essay is preceded by Murfin's own brief description of the approach employed, and is followed by his bibliography of recent critical and theoretical works exemplifying that approach. Murfin's explanations of the new approaches are one of the very best features of the book. He has also written a preface and two comprehensive introductions. Murfin's first introduction supplies useful if unexceptional biographical and historical background material ; his second provides a concise but masterful history of the novel's reception from its publication to the present. As a quality-control editor, however, Murfin has been less consistently good. Murfin's own exposition of psychoanalytic criticism —his one disappointing piece in the entire book—mentions Jacques Lacan only briefly, and he does not include a single work of Lacan's in the bibliography that accompanies it. However, Murfin is far more aware of recent neo-Freudian trends than is Frederick Karl, who has "newly revised" a 1968 essay for present use. Outside of some references to Karl's own 1983 edition of Conrad's letters, there is little in the essay—and certainly nothing relating to psychoanalysis—that could not have been written twenty or more years ago. Readers expecting to learn how contemporary psychoanalytic theories illuminate Conrad's novel will be left as it were in the dark. An obvious product of the Vietnam War period, Karl's essay primarily offers an indignant and moralistic treatment of Kurtz's politics, only to admit too late that "to make a morality play out of the tale is to destroy its felt sense." Adena Rosmarin's "Darkening the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism and Heart of Darkness," on the other hand, is an up-to-date, useful and superbly turned piece that offers...