Memory, Identity and Narrative: Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Siegfried Sassoon’s “Glory of Women” as Paradigms and Depositories of British Cultural Memory and Collective Identity ()
ABSTRACT
This study investigates the representations of memory in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Siegfried Sassoon’s “Glory of Women” with the aim of demonstrating that
the two works teem with versions of collective remembering in the form of
genres, linguistic parameters, ideological and cultural discourses, images and
metaphors of history (what critics call “historiographic
metafiction” understood to mean writing history in arts); mythical and travel
narratives that can attract the attention of creative writers, critics, and
researchers interested in reproducing or exploring the interconnection of
cultural memory, collective identity and narrative (narratological) aspects of
literary texts. Focusing on the representations of memory in these two texts,
and using the narratological aspect of perspectivity or focalization, this
paper answers the questions: Whose memory and which versions of the past are
transmitted from generations to generation through these “fictions of Memory”? What
(narrative) approaches are available for research focusing on memory cultures
within literary studies? What functions do the texts fulfil as repositories/depositories
of British cultural memory and identity? It emerges from the study that the two
texts are paradigms and depositories of British cultural memory and collective
identity.
Share and Cite:
Niba, N. (2022) Memory, Identity and Narrative: Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness and Siegfried Sassoon’s “Glory of Women” as Paradigms and Depositories of British Cultural Memory and Collective Identity.
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
10, 290-314. doi:
10.4236/jss.2022.103022.