Heart of Darkness and Paradise Lost
(Joseph Conrad and John Milton)
I
have been looking at these two works and I was wandering what might change my perception
as a reader to such a work would printing techniques, page layout, or
typography change or affect the way I read a book. I would say no before I taking
this class because all what I thought of was the text and that it is hard to manipulate
such a crucial part of the work. I thought that the historical context that the
work was published in is important to understand the author’s point of view.
However, I have never given the printing process or the circuit that the book
goes through any serious thought, but after being introduced to the long
process that a book undergoes before it arrives at the readers hands, I
realized how ignorant I was about such process. Therefore, I thought of
something that more of a graphical interpretation of the book which I assume
would manipulate the reader’s perception of a work. There is a confusion I have
to make! I haven’t read the examples of books that I am sharing with you today.
Both of my examples were published after the death of the author. Lost paradise
was a long epic poem that went on and on for about 10 books, as a result Gustave
Doré, 1832-1883 did some graphical illustrations to it which might help the
reader understand and quickly link the poem to real or imaginary live. However,
I drawings on the other hand, might also deter the readers from experiencing
linguistic abstraction which is supposed to be the “authors attention!”. The
other example is Heart of Darkness which was published 1899. The graphical version of the novel is rendering of Conrad’s classic by David Zane Mairowitz; Catherine Anyango which was published
in 2010.
The great thing about the version is that it present you with images of the
scenes which makes it easier for the readers to focus their critical minds on
other aspects of the novel, but the problem with this version is that it a
critical version that might orient the readers understanding of the work. However,
such creative work opens our minds to other possibilities could be applied to
reading different works. Finally think of one of the hardest works that you
have read in your live and imagine that it was written in a different style or
illustrated with pictures how would your experience change?
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