Intersemiotic Literacy: Reading Heart of Darkness from Serialized Fiction to Contemporary Book Publication

Abstract

“The Heart of Darkness” was first published in 1899 as a serialized fiction in Blackwood’s Magazine. The publication of Heart of Darkness in book form and under this present title appeared three years later in the volume Youth, a Narrative, and Two Other Stories. To understand how reading as a supposedly passive and personal experience evolves, the phenomenal success of this masterpiece written by the Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad (1867-1924) and its collaborations with different modes of publication would be investigated. This article outlines the publication story of this novella since the time of Conrad till the very present day. To enable an in-depth understanding on how the plot of the narrative interacts with various book cover designs, discussions would be made on whether the visual domain can also portray the juxtaposition of horrors in the exotic milieu with the dark side of humanity. In Re-Covered Rose (2011), the award-winning scholar and literary translator Marco Sonzogni (1971-) examines how book cover design is a form of intersemiotic translation. Being inspired by this stance, it is the aim of this article to dissect whether the contemporary book designs of Heart of Darkness enrich the interpretation of this novella and respond to its contemporary criticisms. The cover designs of Heart of Darkness from Penguin Classics will serve as a case study in understanding how a publisher addresses the rise of new critiques. In addition, 30 book cover designs of Heart of Darkness published since the new millennium will be studied to exemplify the relationships between a literary classic, its book covers and intersemiotic literacy.