Joseph Conrad’s Poetic Prose: An Imagist Dimension
Imagery is the presentation of a descriptive picture in a text to innovatively describing vivid ideas. It invokes all the senses of the reader through descriptive and figurative language. This research aims to analyse the occurrence of different types of imagery and their impact on creating meaning and atmospheric intensity in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, which is a journey of a seaman from Europe to Africa. The seaman named Marlow describes his surroundings and provides observation in the form of imagery. The data is analyzed by categorizing images into different types using Ezra Pound’s 1913 imagist framework, which devises imagery as a significant feature of poetic writings. It also gives the concept of poetic prose by promoting the idea of writing poetry in the form of prose. Results indicate visual imagery represents Africa and Congo as a dark and wild place through the portrayal of Europeans and Africans. Kinesthetic imagery elucidates Europeans’ vulnerability in front of African’s atmosphere, their transformation into savagery, lust for monetary benefits, and brutality in Africa. Auditory imagery reveals that illegal use of language makes people hypocrites, while Africans’ screams and cries represent them as savages. Lastly, gustatory and tactile imagery justifies Europeans’ superiority and Africans’ dependency. The presence of imagery ensures that it has an identifiable function, which helps to produce the affective meaning of the novel.
Keywords: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Poetic Prose, Ezra pound’s Imagism, Visual imagery, Auditory imagery, Kinesthetic imagery, Olfactory imagery, Gustatory imagery, Tactile imagery.
