Fiction and Autobiography: A Study of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of 65 Darkness and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man

Although Heart of Darkness is an earlier modernist novel than A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, both novels incorporate autobiographical elements which project the authors' traumatic experiences with the nihilistic practices in their societies. This paper examines fiction and autobiography with reference to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manwith the aim of illustrating that these authors integrate personal life experiences in their fictional woks to project their feelings and thoughts about the modernist experience.