Formed by Place: Spatiality, Irony, and Empire in Conrad's 'An Outpost of Progress'

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dc.contributor.authorRutledge, Thais
dc.contributor.authorTally, Robert T., Jr.
dc.date.accessioned2020-03-05T15:07:11Z
dc.date.available2020-03-05T15:07:11Z
dc.date.issued2016-11
dc.description.abstractIn its ironic narrative and distinctive geography, Joseph Conrad’s 1897 short story ‘An Outpost of Progress’ is well suited for geocritical analysis, insofar as Conrad demonstrates the degree to which space and place affect both the characters in the story and style of the text. Focusing on the unique setting – the ‘outpost’ – in which the events take place, we argue that Conrad’s tale employs an ironic narrator in order to highlight the tale’s distinctive spatiality, particularly with respect to a geopolitical system that too neatly divides the spaces of the globe into civilised and barbaric regions. The spatiality of ‘An Outpost of Progress’ can be seen in the geographical aspects of the narrative, with the specific site or heterotopia of the ‘outpost’ situated at the edge of a territory coded as ‘barbaric’ or ‘uncivilised,’ thus connecting the colonised domain in central Africa to the metropolitan society of northwestern Europe, largely unseen, but implicitly present throughout the story. But this spatiality may also be observed in its formal or stylistic elements, especially in the point of view and voice of the narrator, as the perspective shifts from omniscient overseer to ironic commentator and then to a free indirect style in which the distance between narrator and subject is dramatically reduced. In this way, Conrad produces an ironic, spatial narrative that highlights, in both content and form, the absurdity of the imperialist ‘civilising mission’ in Africa.
dc.description.departmentEnglish
dc.formatText
dc.format.extent16 pages
dc.format.medium1 file (.pdf)
dc.identifier.citationRutledge, T., & Tally, R. T. (2016). Formed by place: Spatiality, irony, and empire in Conrad’s ‘An Outpost of Progress. Transnational Literature, 9(1), pp. 1–16.
dc.identifier.issn1836-4845
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10877/9352
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherFlinders Humanities Research Centre
dc.sourceTransnational Literature, 2016, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 1–16.
dc.subjectspatiality
dc.subjectirony
dc.subjectConrad, Joseph
dc.subjectAn Outpost of Progress
dc.subjectEnglish
dc.titleFormed by Place: Spatiality, Irony, and Empire in Conrad's 'An Outpost of Progress'
dc.typeArticle

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