Long before the issue of colonialism in Joseph Conrad’s works became a prominent topic in Conrad studies, Florence Clemens initiated this conversation and began the dialogue that has since become a crucial scholarly conversation.
This is the first major study to bring together for examination all of Conrad's Malay fiction: the early novels, Almayer's Folly , An Outcast of the Islands , and Lord Jim ; the two later novels, Victory and The Rescue ; and various short stories, such as The Lagoon and Karain . The volume focuses on cross-cultural encounters, cultural identity and cultural dislocation, paying particular attention to issues of race and gender. He also situates Conrad's fiction in relation to earlier English accounts of South-East Asia.
Issues of racial discrimination, imperialist exploitation, and accuracy of observation have long interested Conrad's critics. As a European writing about imperialism in exotic lands, Conrad offered a vivid, but subjective account of the confrontations between the cultures and peoples of East and West. Though some in Africa have condemned his novels as racist, the books have been used as models for the work of recent generations of native writers. This collection of essays places Conrad's work under the scrutiny of an international array of scholars, who explore the response to Conrad in contemporary times, as well as during his own era.
Edward W. Said locates Joseph Conrad's fear of personal disintegration in his constant re-narration of the past. Using the author's personal letters as a guide to understanding his fiction, Said draws an important parallel between Conrad's view of his own life and the manner and form of his stories. The critic also argues that the author, who set his fiction in exotic locations like East Asia and Africa, projects political dimensions in his work that mirror a colonialist preoccupation with "civilizing" native peoples. Said then suggests that this dimension should be considered when reading all of Western literature. First published in 1966, Said's critique of the Western self's struggle with modernity signaled the beginnings of his groundbreaking work, Orientalism, and remains a cornerstone of postcolonial studies today.
Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, who gradually transformed himself into the English writer, Joseph Conrad, was a mercurial personality. He left Poland for the sea, though he had no experience with salt water. He left the Polish language for French, and then for English. He attempted suicide at the age of twenty. He invested in various schemes and lost his inheritance. He married an English typist nearly sixteen years younger than himself with whom he had nothing in common. He worked as a writer though he made no money through all the years of his most important work and though he experienced terrible psychological breakdowns after completing each novel. He was warm with his friends, ingratiating with influential strangers, but also intensely irritable and easily offended. His work is as varied and changeable as his personality, from his first two, emotionally intense Malay novels, to the stolid and confident Nigger of the “Narcissus” and “Typhoon”; from the coldly ironic “Outpost of Progress” to the nightmarishly subjective Heart of Darkness; from the leisurely, panoramic visions of Nostromo to the tautly nervous, claustrophobic ironies in The Secret Agent. Despite the extraordinary thematic and tonal range of his work, critics have imposed a stable political perspective on his fiction—most often an organic conservatism, influenced by his Polish background. This is understandable; until recently, a critic’s role has been to impose order on an artist’s creations. The approach in this book is different. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard, especially on the latter’s critique of what he called “the grand narrative,” A Political Genealogy of Joseph Conrad shows how Conrad’s politics were always radically contingent on audience, contemporary events, and, especially, genre. While the political perspective in each of his stories and novels may be more-or-less coherent and consistent, there is no consistency throughout his work. A Political Genealogy of Joseph Conrad is the first book devoted exclusively to Conrad’s politics since the 1960s.
Andrew Francis' Culture and Commerce in Conrad's Asian Fiction is the first book-length critical study of commerce in Conrad's work. It reveals not only the complex connections between culture and commerce in Conrad's Asian fiction, but also how he employed commerce in characterization, moral contexts, and his depiction of relations at a point of advanced European imperialism. Conrad's treatment of commerce - Arab, Chinese and Malay, as well as European - is explored within a historically specific context as intricate and resistant to traditional readings of commerce as simple and homogeneous. Through the analysis of both literary and non-literary sources, this book examines capitalism, colonialism and globalization within the commercial, political and social contexts of colonial Southeast Asia.
Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Joseph Conrad's novels and short stories have consistently figured into - and helped to define - the dominant trends in literary criticism. This book is the first to provide a thorough yet accessible overview of Conrad scholarship and criticism spanning the entire history of Conrad studies, from the 1895 publication of his first book, Almayer's Folly, to the present. While tracing the general evolution of the commentary surrounding Conrad's work, John G. Peters's careful analysis also evaluates Conrad's impact on critical trends such as the belles lettres tradition, the New Criticism, psychoanalysis, structuralist and post-structuralist criticism, narratology, postcolonial studies, gender and women's studies, and ecocriticism. The breadth and scope of Peters's study make this text an essential resource for Conrad scholars and students of English literature and literary criticism.
The Routledge Companion to Joseph Conrad attests to the global significance and enduring importance of Conrad’s works, reception, and legacy. This volume brings together an international roster of scholars who consider his works in relation to biography, narrative, politics, women’s studies, comparative literature, and other forms of art. They offer approaches as diverse as re-examining Conrad’s sea voyages using newly available digital materials, analyzing his archipelagic narrative techniques, applying Chinese philosophy to Lord Jim, interrogating gendered epistemology in the neglected story “The Tale,” considering Conrad alongside W.E.B. Du Bois, Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, or Orhan Pamuk, or alongside sound, gesture, opera, graphic novels, or contemporary events. An invaluable resource for students and scholars of Conrad and twentieth-century literature, this groundbreaking collection shows how Conrad’s works – their artistry, vision, and ideas – continue to challenge, perplex, and delight.
Opens up the rich topic of Joseph Conrad's complex relationship with languageJoseph Conrad was, famously, trilingual in Polish, French and English, and was also familiar with German, Russian, Dutch and Malay. He was also a consummate stylist, using words with the precision of a poet in his fiction.The essays in this collection examine his engagement with specific lexical sets and terminology - maritime language, the language of terror, and abstract language; issues of linguistic communication - speech, hearing, and writing; and his relationship to specific languages - his deployment of foreign languages, his decision to write in English, and his reception through translation. The collection closes with an Afterword by renowned Conrad scholar, Laurence Davies.Key FeaturesThe first academic and critical study wholly devoted to the topic of Conrad and language, and the first to address that topic from a diversity of critical approachesSpeaks to a range of current trends in literary criticism including transnationalism, lateness, translation studies, terrorism and disabilities studiesComprises newly commissioned essays by leading and emerging Conrad scholars from around the world, employing a variety of approaches including philosophy, psychoanalytical theory, biographical theory, as well as textually driven readings
Conrad's fiction is characterized by an enduring recourse to the performing arts for metaphor, allegory, symbol, and subject matter; however, this aspect of Conrad's non-dramatic works has only recently begun to come into its own among literary critics. In response to this seminal moment, Joseph Conrad and the Performing Arts offers an exciting, interdisciplinary forum for one of the most interesting and nascent areas of Conrad studies. Adopting a variety of theoretical approaches, the contributors examine major and neglected works within the context of the performing arts: cultural performance in Conrad's Malay fiction; Conrad's use and parody of popular traditions such as melodrama, Grand-Guignol, and commedia dell'arte; Conrad's engagement with the visual culture of early cinema; Conrad's interest in the motifs of shadowgraphy (shadow plays); Conrad's relationship to Shakespeare; and the enduring influence of opera on his work. Taken together, the essays provide, through solid scholarship and richly provocative speculation, new insight into Conrad's oeuvre, and invite future dialogue in the burgeoning field of Conrad and the performing arts.