HEART OF DARKNESS BEATS IN CONGO: THE STORY OF 23 YEARS OF CAPTIVITY AND ATROCITY
Abstract: In the 19th century the hunger for raw materials in the big European countries like England, France and Germany and the political rivalry among these countries cause colonialism to reach its peak. In the same period, along with these countries, colonialism continues its existence in Belgiu...
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| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | DE EN FR TR |
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Fırat University
2019
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| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/fa5e7ac294324ad3a547696a3a96d422 |
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| Sumario: | Abstract: In the 19th century the hunger for raw materials in the big European countries like England, France and Germany and the political rivalry among these countries cause colonialism to reach its peak. In the same period, along with these countries, colonialism continues its existence in Belgium, strikingly. However, the difference of Belgium’s colony Congo, from the other colonies is that it is the private property of King Leopold II. and owing to this he has commited cruel practices, genocide and theft in Congo for 23 years. In this context, this study reveals the parallels between the fictional realities in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the aforementioned experiences lived during Leopold’s period and deals with the novel(la) as a novel(la) of theft. It is an undeniable fact that story, novel, play and even poetry reflect the social, political and economic conditions of the era they were born within. It is the function of the literature sociology constructed on the Marxist criticism to search and determine the relationship between literature including literary works and the social conditions. In Marxist criticism the substructure formed of means of production and relations of production defines the superstructure formed of elements like culture, religion, language, government and traditions in society. When Marxist criticism is handled in terms of literature along with the sociological context, it is seen that it has reflection theory and realism in its basis. In the 19th and 20th centuries Marxist literature theorists took the reflection theory going back to Aristoteles and interpreted it in terms of economy and substructure-superstructure relations mentioned above. Taking this as a starting point, Marxist criticism method supposes that there is a close relationship between literary works and social structure. Besides, Marxist criticism consists of the notion that literature and thus literary works are a means of production, which was pioneered by Althusser and became valid in 1960s. In this case, the author is a producer who takes the ideology or in other words, the raw material present in the society, and handles and changes it by means of literature in order to produce a new product. In brief, it is out of question that either society of the ideology existing in the society is reflected directly. That means, the literary works are not mirrors reflecting the society exactly, as they do according to the reflection theory of Aristoteles, but a ne |
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