Abstract
This chapter will begin with a discussion about the colonial context of cannibalism through Conrad’s novel, ‘Heart of Darkness’ in order to impress how this taboo subject came to define—within the Victorian consciousness—the image of the savage Other. This context will then provide the impetus for the central investigation into the tales of cannibalism at sea which littered the nineteenth-century press and how ‘Falk’ resonates with these accounts. By looking at these stories and one in particular, the Greely Arctic Expedition, it becomes clear that Conrad was concerned with demonstrating that the reality of cannibalism was a deed carried out not in foreign and savage lands, but amongst white Europeans who based their notion of civilization on abstract codes of morality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Atkinson, Neill. 2001. Crew Culture. Wellington: Te Papa Press.
Conrad, Jessie. 1935. Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him. London: Jarrolds.
Conrad, Joseph. 1903/1946. Falk: A Reminiscence. The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, Typhoon & Three Short Tales. London: Dent.
Conrad, Joseph and F.M. Hueffer. 1924. The Nature of a Crime. London: Duckworth.
Dickens, Charles. Household Words, vol. X (August 1854 to January 1855).
Dickens, Charles. 1854. Household Narrative of Current Events: Being a Monthly Supplement to Household Words. London: BiblioBazaar.
Guttridge, Leonard F. 2006. Ghosts of Cape Sabine: The Harrowing True Story of the Greely Expedition. Bloomington: iuniverse.inc.
Keating, George. 1929. A Conrad Memorial Library: The Collection of George T. Keating. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Doran.
Kilgour, Maggie. 2001. Foreword. In Eating Their Words: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Cultural Identity, ed. Kristen Guest. New York: State University of New York Press.
Kilgour, Maggie. 1990. From Communion to Cannibalism: An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Knowles, Owen, and Gene M. Moore. 2000. Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Phillips, Jerry. 1998. Cannibalism quo Capitalism: The metaphorics of accumulation in Marx, Conrad, Shakespeare, and Marlow. In Cannibalism and the Colonial World, ed. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Simmons, A.H. 2002. The Language of Atrocity: Representing the Congo of Conrad and Casement. In Conrad in Africa: New Essays on ‘Heart of Darkness, ed. Attie de Lange and Gail Fincham, 85–106. New York: Columbia University Press.
Simpson, A.W. Brian. 1986. Cannibalism and the Common Law. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Tanner, Tony. 1976. “Gnawed Bones” and “Artless Tales”—Eating and Narrative in Conrad. In Joseph Conrad: A Commemoration, ed. Norman Sherry, London: Macmillan.
Vlitos, Paul. 2008. Conrad’s Ideas of Gastronomy: Dining in “Falk”. Victorian Literature and Culture 36 (2): 433–449.
Watts, Cedric. 1977. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: A Critical and Contextual Discussion. Milan: Mursia International.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Salmons, K. (2017). Cannibalism and ‘Falk: A Reminiscence’. In: Food in the Novels of Joseph Conrad. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56623-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56623-8_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56622-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56623-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)