Abstract: Heart of Darkness has been a “battlefield” and “testing ground” for critics and theorists in different lines of inquries throughout the 20^th century. Still, it seems to have triggered discussions over new issues since the start of the new millennium. As far as Marlow's narrative style is concerned, some critics contend that the novella was written for “elite readers,” which implies that Conrad deliberately attempts to distance himself from popular culture and “common readers.” With regard to its emphasis on “imperial romance” in subject matter, many critics point out that the novella's “target readers” are exactly the “common readers” on the British literary market at that time. A retrospective look at the context of the novella's serial publication, however, shows that Conrad merely used its popular subject and intended audience as a ploy in grooming his “ideal readers.” By using Marlow as the principal narrator and setting up the listening scene as an invitational event, Conrad guides his readers through a reading of “common readers” into a symbolic reading of the story's aesthetic and thematic implications. Such a stylistic strategy and the relevant reading progression are implicitly intended for the “ideal readers” among “common readers.” In other words, all he wants to accomplish is using popular subject to lure “common readers” into the world of the story and, then, orienting them, with a series of devices, such as “embedded structure,” “listening scene,” “delayed decoding,” and symbolic narration, to go beyond their initial reading expectations conditioned by popular stories and the context of serial publication.

Key words: Heart of Darkness, target reader, ideal reader, stylistic strategy, reading progression