Translating the other: Marlow’S Discourse between Imperial Rhetoric and Primary Orality

• Authors: Ana Cristina Băniceru
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present paper attempts to see what determines Marlow’s difficulty to turn his Congolese experience into language. Therefore, I argue that Marlow’s storytelling collapses because at the core of his discourse there is the unknown semantic universe of the other. In the “heart of darkness”, on the banks of the Congo River, there stands an unknown language, the language of the natives which is known only by Kurtz. Thus it becomes impossible for Marlow to translate it and incorporate it in his story.

Keywords

EN

discourse of alterity; primary orality; rhetoric of Empire

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Romanian Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 56-64

Dates

published

2014-03-01

online

2014-05-01

Contributors

author

Ana Cristina Băniceru

• West University of Timișoara

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/rjes-2014-0007