Required Reading:
Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- "Victorian Imperialism" (from the "Victorian Age" unit of Topics Online, an online companion to the Norton Anthology of English Literature). The submenus ("Texts and Contexts," "Explorations," etc.) are also worth checking out if you have the time.
- Edward Said, "Two Visions in Heart of Darkness" (.pdf format, requires Adobe Reader 6.0 [see below])
Salih, Season of Migration to the North
- Saree Makdisi, "The Empire Renarrated: Season of Migration to the North and the Reinvention of the Present" (Critical Inquiry 18:4 (Summer 1992))
Internet Resources:
Conrad, Heart of Darkness
- Heart of Darkness in context—some related contemporary texts:
- H. Rider Haggard, She (1885) and King Solomon's Mines (1885) (ClassicReader.com)
- "[Rudyard Kipling's] 'The White Man's Burden' and Its Critics" (1899) (Jim Zwick, Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898-1935)
- Mark Twain, King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule (1905) (Jim Zwick, Mark Twain's Anti-Imperialist Writings: A Guide to Online Resources)
- Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (1912) (Project Gutenburg)
- Vachel Lindsay, "The
Congo: A Study of the Negro Race" (1914) (University
of Toronto) (See also Project Gutenburg's edition of The
Congo and Other Poems)
- Vachel Lindsay (Mark W. Van Wienen, Modern American Poetry; includes a section on Race Criticism and "The Congo")
- T.S. Eliot, "The
Hollow Men" (1925)(alternate
site)
- Criticism of "The
Hollow Men" (Grover Smith, Modern American
Poetry)
- Criticism of "The
Hollow Men" (Grover Smith, Modern American
Poetry)
- Other Resources (Africa and Heart of Darkness)
- "Africa and Africans in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (Candice Bradley, Lawrence U)
- Chinua Achebe, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (alternate site) (illustrated excerpt of Achebe's essay, from the Norton's Topics Online)
- Excerpt from Chinua Achebe and Robert Lyons, Another Africa (reprint from Salon magazine, November 1998) (original version with photos)
- "Stereoviews
of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo" (Jim
Zwick, Stereoscopic
Visions of War and Empire). Early 20th-century
photographs of colonial atrocities, published by the Congo
Reform Association.
- Other Resources (Belgian Imperialism in the Congo)
- Reforming the Heart of Darkness: The Congo Reform Movement in England and the United States (Jim Zwick, Syracuse University). Yet another of Zwick's indispensible and exhaustive collections of primary texts from the Anti-Imperialist movement. (The "Home" page above is slightly misleading; click on "Contents" for an Index of documents contained on the site.)
- Jean Muteba Rahier, "The Ghost of Leopold II: The Belgian Royal Museum of Central Africa and Its Dusty Colonialist Exhibition" (Research in African Literatures 34:1 [Spring 2003]--HSU users only)
Salih, Season of Migration to the North
- Short Biography of Salih (African Writers Series)
- Brian Gibson, "An Island Unto Himself? Masculinity in Season of Migration to the North" (Jouvert 7:1 [2002])