Conrad’s European Context
Conrad’s European Context

Author: Andrzej Busza

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-04-02

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 9004690921

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

On account of Conrad’s tragic and fascinating life before he became a writer, critics have usually offered a historical account of his early Polish years. Less attention has been paid to the cultural and literary background of that period and its subsequent influence. In fact, initially that influence was largely ignored. My aim has been not only to rectify that deficiency but to broaden the scope of the issue. In addition to dealing with his Polish background, the book also relates Conrad’s writing to other European literary traditions, notably French and Russian. Exploring the extraordinary geographical and historical range of Conrad’s fictional world, the book examines the rhetorical and narrative strategies employed in its vividly dramatic as well as psychologically insightful depictions.

Joseph Conrad's Critical Reception
Joseph Conrad's Critical Reception

Author: John G. Peters

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-04-29

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 110703485X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date history of the commentary written about the life and works of Joseph Conrad.

Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad

Author: Tim Middleton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-13

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1135137293

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad
The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad

Author: John Stape

Publisher: Anchor Canada

Published: 2011-06-22

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0307363791

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Published to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad is a brilliant and highly readable biography of a literary figure of world-wide reputation. Conrad’s impact has been so profound and far-reaching that, eighty years after his death, he remains an essential cultural reference point. Such phrases as “heart of darkness” and “The horror! The horror!” have entered the language, often cited without an awareness of their original contexts. His popular legacy extends to Latin American fiction, to the spy novel, to the terrorist and anarchist character, and to film. The writers he has influenced range from T. S. Eliot to William Faulkner to V. S. Naipaul and John Le Carré. For a writer of “difficult” fiction he has enjoyed a remarkably wide impact, yet as Marlow proclaims in Lord Jim of the figure whose story he tells,“he was one of us,” and so Conrad remains in fascinating ways. Stape’s biography – an intimate portrait, including previously unpublished photographs – offers a Conrad for our times, a man with a deep sense of otherness, of multiple cultural identities and, writing in his third language, a working writer, whose novels and stories are a cornerstone of literary modernism and, indeed, of modernity itself.

Critical Approaches to Joseph Conrad
Critical Approaches to Joseph Conrad

Author: Agata Szczeszak-Brewer

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 2015-08-31

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1611175305

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Conrad in Perspective
Conrad in Perspective

Author: Zdzisław Najder

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1997-11-13

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0521573211

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Zdzislaw Najder, one of the world's leading authorities on Joseph Conrad and author of the major biography Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle (1983), is widely acclaimed for his particular insights into Conrad's Polish background. The fruits of thirty years of Conrad study appear in this landmark volume of his essays, which explore a wide range of topics: Conrad's national and cultural heritage; his fictions, from the unfinished 'Sisters' and Lord Jim to The Secret Agent; his attitude towards Russia in general and Dostoevsky in particular; his concepts of man and society; and the role of the idea of honour in his work. In a series of more general essays Najder goes on to place Conrad's work within a broad European philosophical, political and literary context. Conrad in Perspective offers new insights into the life and work of one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists by one of his most perceptive critics.

A Historical Guide to Joseph Conrad
A Historical Guide to Joseph Conrad

Author: John Peters

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0195332784

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Joseph Conrad achieved worldwide literary renown in his third language. Despite not having learned English until his twenties, Conrad succeeded in breaking new ground with his portrayal of anti-heroes & distinctive narrative style, becoming a major influence on 20th century English language fiction.

Colonial Odysseys
Colonial Odysseys

Author: David Adams

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-08-06

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1501720422

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Works such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out, E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, and Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust explore the relationship between Britain and its colonies when the British Empire was at its height. David Adams observes that, because of their structure and specific literary allusions, they also demand to be read in relation to the epic tradition. The elegantly written and powerfully argued Colonial Odysseys focuses on narratives published in English between 1890 and 1940 in which protagonists journey from the familiar world of Europe to alien colonial worlds. The underlying concerns of these narratives, Adams discovers, are often less political or literary than metaphysical: in each of these fictions a major character dies as a result of the journey, inviting reflection on the negation of existence. Repeatedly, imaginative encounters with distant, uncanny colonies produce familiar, insular presentations of life as an odyssey, with death as the home port. Expanding postcolonial and Marxist theories by drawing on the philosophy of Hans Blumenberg, Adams finds in this preoccupation with mortality a symptom of the failure of secular culture to give meaning to death. This concern, in his view, shapes the ways modernist narratives reinforce or critique imperial culture—the authors project onto British imperial experience their anxieties about the individual's relation to the absolute.