Author: Mark Wollaeger Publisher: Stanford University Press ISBN: 0804766819 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
"You want more scepticism at the very foundation of your work. Scepticism, the tonic of minds, the tonic of life, the agent of truth - the way of art and salvation." Joseph Conrad wrote these words to John Galsworthy in 1901, and this study argues that Conrad's skepticism forms the basis of his most important works, participating in a tradition of philosophical skepticism that extends from Descartes to the present. Conrad's epistemological and moral skepticism - expressed, forestalled, mitigated, and suppressed - provides the terms for the author's rethinking of the peculiar relation between philosophy and literary form in Conrad's writing and, more broadly, for reconsidering what it means to call any novel 'philosophical'. Among the issues freshly argued are Conrad's thematics of coercion, isolation, and betrayal; the complicated relations among author, narrator, and character; and the logic of Conradian romance, comedy, and tragedy. The author also offers a new way of conceptualizing the shape of Conrad's career, especially the 'decline' evidenced in the later fiction. The uniqueness of Conrad's multifarious literary and cultural inheritance makes it difficult to locate him securely in the dominant tradition of the British novel. A philosophical approach to Conrad, however, reveals links to other novelists - notably Hardy, Forster, and Woolf - all of whom share in the increasing philosophical burden of the modern novel by enacting the very philosophical issues that are discussed within their pages. Conrad's interest as a skeptic is heightened by the degree to which he resists the insights proffered by his own skepticism. The first chapter introduces the idea of the Conradian 'shelter', and the next two use Schopenhauer to show how the language of metaphysical speculation in Tales of Unrest and 'Heart of Darkness' spills over into a religious impulse that resists the disintegrating effect of Conrad's skepticism. The author then turns to Hume to model the authorial skepticism that in Lord Jim contests the continuing visionary strain of the earlier fiction and Descartes to analyze the ways in which Romantic vision is more stringently chastened by irony in Nostromo and The Secret Agent. The concluding chapter touches on several late novels before examining how competing models of political agency in Conrad's last great fiction of skepticism, Under Western Eyes, situate it somewhere between ideology critique and a mystified account of the exigencies of individual consciousness.
Author: Tim Middleton Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135137293 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 226
Book Description
The popular yet complex work of Joseph Conrad has attracted much critical attention over the years, from the perspectives of postcolonial, modernist, cultural and gender studies. This guide to his compelling work presents: an accessible introduction to the contexts and many interpretations of Conrad’s texts, from publication to the present an introduction to key critical texts and perspectives on Conrad’s life and work, situated in a broader critical history cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism suggestions for further reading. Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Joseph Conrad and seeking not only a guide to his works, but also a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds them.
Author: Evelyn Tsz Yan Chan Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 9811925844 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 160
Book Description
This book focuses on the complex relationships between inheritance, work, and desert in literature. It shows how, from its manifestation in the trope of material inheritance and legacy in Victorian fiction, “inheritance” gradually took on additional, more modern meanings in Joseph Conrad’s fiction on work and self-making. In effect, the emphasis on inheritance as referring to social rank and wealth acquired through birth shifted to a focus on talent, ability, and merit, often expressed through work. The book explores how Conrad’s fiction engaged with these changing modes of inheritance and work, and the resulting claims of desert they led to. Uniquely, it argues that Conrad’s fiction critiques claims of desert arising from both work and inheritance, while also vividly portraying the emotional costs and existential angst that these beliefs in desert entailed. The argument speaks to and illuminates today’s debates on moral desert arising from work and inheritance, in particular from meritocratic ideals. Its new approach to Conrad’s works will appeal to students and scholars of Conrad and literary modernism, as well as a wider audience interested in philosophical and social debates on desert deriving from inheritance and work.
Author: John G. Peters Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139457926 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 136
Book Description
Joseph Conrad is one of the most intriguing and important modernist novelists. His writing continues to preoccupy twenty-first-century readers. This introduction by a leading scholar is aimed at students coming to Conrad's work for the first time. The rise of postcolonial studies has inspired interest in Conrad's themes of travel, exploration, and racial and ethnic conflict. John Peters explains how these themes are explored in his major works, Nostromo, Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, as well as his short stories. He provides an essential overview of Conrad's fascinating life and career and his approach to writing and literature. A guide to further reading is included which points to some of the most useful secondary criticism on Conrad. This is a most comprehensive and concise introduction to studying Conrad, and will be essential reading for students of the twentieth-century novel and of modernism.
Author: Ludwig Schnauder Publisher: Rodopi ISBN: 9042026162 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 269
Book Description
A paradigmatic analysis of three of Conrad's most significant novels, "Heart of Darkness, Nostromo," and "The Secret Agent," investigates the writer's position in the free will and determinism debate by identifying recurring themes in which the freedom-of-the-will problem manifests itself.
Author: Andrew Michael Roberts Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317891414 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
Joseph Conrad is a key figure in modernist fiction, whose innovative work engages with many of the crucial philosophical, moral and political concerns of the twentieth century. This collection of major critical readings of his work is arranged according to the issues which each critic addresses, issues which are of crucial importance, and in many cases remain controversial, within contemporary literary theory and criticism. Following an opening section on the critical tradition, indicating how the study of Conrad's work has been politicised since the 1970s, there are sections on 'Narrative, Textuality and Interpretation', 'Imperialism', 'Gender and Sexuality', 'Class and Ideology', and 'Modernity'. Within each section two or three critical excerpts offer contrasting and complementary accounts of the fiction, while the headnotes to each piece and the introduction place these excerpts within the wider critical debate, clarifying for the reader both the theoretical issues and the interpretation of Conrad's fiction. A glossary of terms and a bibliography categorised by critical approach complete a volume which will provide an invaluable resource for students of Conrad and twentieth-century literature as well as other readers of Conrad's work.
Author: Agata Szczeszak-Brewer Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press ISBN: 1611175305 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
Critical Approaches to Joseph Conrad is a collection of essays directed to both new and experienced readers of Conrad. The book takes into account recent developments in literary theory, including the prominence of ecocriticism, ecopostcolonial approaches, and gender studies. Editor Agata Szczeszak-Brewer offers a comprehensive and comprehensible introduction to Conrad's most popular texts, also addressing the most recent academic debates as well as the conversations about narrative and genre in Conrad's canon. Students and scholars of Conrad, twentieth-century literature, and modernism will appreciate the clear, accessible prose by nineteen internationally recognized contributors who approach Conrad in different ways, from postcolonial and ecocritical perspectives, through explorations of gender, to psychoanalysis, narrative theory, and political analysis. Beginning with a biographical introduction by Szczeszak-Brewer, the collection offers an essay outlining the cultural and historical contexts that influenced Conrad's fiction and an essay on reception of Conrad's work. Following that, contributors provide critical approaches to Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, The Secret Sharer, and Under Western Eyes. In these sections scholars offer insights about complex issues in Conrad's fiction, ranging from the study of specific literary tools and narrative development in his books to the political theories in Conrad's portrayal of the threat of terrorism and violent revolutions.
Author: Suresh Raval Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000040402 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 265
Book Description
Originally published in 1986, this is a powerful and original book. It offers textual interpretation of Conrad’s major work and articulates the subtlety and richness of his treatment of social-political institutions and of the forces that complicate and distort private and public life. Suresh Raval argues that the social-personal relations in Conrad’s fiction cannot be conceived apart from their existence in the political life of a community; but at the same time they cannot be accommodated institutionally. The author’s concern is with the problematic status of the self under various perspectives: experience and understanding (Heart of Darkness), an ethical ideal (Lord Jim), history (Nostromo), ideology (The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes), scepticism (Victory). What the self is remains ambiguous and elusive. Conrad’s fiction is concerned with exhibiting the failure of language, but always as a result of an immense effort of language itself. As language undoes itself in the act of seeking utterance, so Conrad’s fictional mode – romance – turns into the opposite of itself as it unfolds. Raval demonstrates that incompatible alternatives – intention and action, thought and experience, the individual and the social, the logical and the contingent – are entangled with each other, and how this entanglement works in the fiction. Raval’s exploration of Conrad’s scepticism shows why Conrad cannot be characterized as a political conservative or radical without distorting the complexity and seriousness of his reflection on society. For his scepticism is the product not just of intelligence but of intelligence conscious of its limitations, and is thus able to make a devastating critique of the nihilism sometimes attributed to Conrad by critics. Only those who think that morality has to have a secure single foundation if it is to be real are pushed into regarding Conrad’s scepticism as a form of nihilism. Professor Raval’s important study brings philosophical and literary interests to bear on Conrad’s major fiction and illuminates those aspects of his art which have puzzled and fascinated his readers. It will be deservedly valued by those studying and teaching modern literature.
Author: Joseph Conrad Publisher: DigiCat ISBN: Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "A Set of Six" by Joseph Conrad. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Author: Mark Wollaeger
Author: Tim Middleton
Author: Evelyn Tsz Yan Chan
Author: John G. Peters
Author: John G. Peters
Author: Ludwig Schnauder
Author: Andrew Michael Roberts
Author: Agata Szczeszak-Brewer
Author: Suresh Raval
Author: Joseph Conrad