Myth, Ritual and Symbol in Folklore and Literature
Abstract
The subject of this paper is the analysis of myth in Conrad’s two novels: “The Heart of Darkness” and “The Nigger of the “Narcissus”. Analysis has shown that, Kurtz, the hero of “The Heart of Darkness” is a parody of Aeneas, the main protagonist of Virgil’s “Aeneid”. The importance of myth is hinted in the title of Conrad’s novel “The Nigger of the “Narcissus”. The ship where the action of the novel takes place is called Narcissus, a mythical figure from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses. The research has found that Conrad’s use of myth as a literary
method foreshadows the advent of modernism.