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Author: Kenneth B. Newell Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443827916 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 170
Book Description
This book presents a new interpretation of Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim based on readings from not only its published text but also its principal manuscript text. Extensive use of the manuscript text has not been a feature of any other work on Lord Jim, and such use helps bring into focus a fixed pattern of meaning and an implicit unity that Conrad said the novel has. This result controverts not only postmodern critics, who say that the novel lacks any fixed pattern of meaning, but almost all critics since its publication, who have said that it lacks unity—specifically, that it separates into two halves, the Patna half and the Patusan half. However, with the help of the manuscript text, a detailed interpretation extending over the whole of Lord Jim shows it to be a unified whole. As Conrad wrote to his publisher four days after completing the novel, it is “the development of one situation, only one really from beginning to end.” Most recent Lord Jim criticism discusses the novel from a standpoint critical of the author and in political or epistemological terms, whereas the present book discusses it from a standpoint sympathetic to the author and in symbolic and metaphysical terms. The metaphysical question that pervades the novel and helps unify it is whether the “destructive element” that is the “spirit” of the Universe has intention—and, beyond that, malevolent intention—toward any particular individual or is, instead, indiscriminate, impartial, and indifferent. Depending (as a corollary) on the answer to that question is the degree to which the particular individual can be judged responsible for what he does or does not do. Variant responses to the question or its corollary are provided not only by several characters and voices in Lord Jim but also by a letter of Conrad’s and by excerpts from works by Arthur Schopenhauer, Thomas Hardy, James Thomson (“B. V.”), and John Stuart Mill. The present book is written in a lay vocabulary free of the diction of postmodern theory and so would be understandable to non-academic as well as academic readers. It is intended for anyone interested in gaining a coherent nonpolitical understanding of Lord Jim.
Author: Kenneth B. Newell Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443827916 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 170
Book Description
This book presents a new interpretation of Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim based on readings from not only its published text but also its principal manuscript text. Extensive use of the manuscript text has not been a feature of any other work on Lord Jim, and such use helps bring into focus a fixed pattern of meaning and an implicit unity that Conrad said the novel has. This result controverts not only postmodern critics, who say that the novel lacks any fixed pattern of meaning, but almost all critics since its publication, who have said that it lacks unity—specifically, that it separates into two halves, the Patna half and the Patusan half. However, with the help of the manuscript text, a detailed interpretation extending over the whole of Lord Jim shows it to be a unified whole. As Conrad wrote to his publisher four days after completing the novel, it is “the development of one situation, only one really from beginning to end.” Most recent Lord Jim criticism discusses the novel from a standpoint critical of the author and in political or epistemological terms, whereas the present book discusses it from a standpoint sympathetic to the author and in symbolic and metaphysical terms. The metaphysical question that pervades the novel and helps unify it is whether the “destructive element” that is the “spirit” of the Universe has intention—and, beyond that, malevolent intention—toward any particular individual or is, instead, indiscriminate, impartial, and indifferent. Depending (as a corollary) on the answer to that question is the degree to which the particular individual can be judged responsible for what he does or does not do. Variant responses to the question or its corollary are provided not only by several characters and voices in Lord Jim but also by a letter of Conrad’s and by excerpts from works by Arthur Schopenhauer, Thomas Hardy, James Thomson (“B. V.”), and John Stuart Mill. The present book is written in a lay vocabulary free of the diction of postmodern theory and so would be understandable to non-academic as well as academic readers. It is intended for anyone interested in gaining a coherent nonpolitical understanding of Lord Jim.
Author: Ian Watt Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520340892 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 395
Book Description
"Nothing short of a masterpiece. . . . One of the great critical works produced since the 1950s."—New York Times This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980. "Nothing short of a masterpiece. . . . One of the great critical works produced since the 1950s."—New York Times This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek
Author: Ursula Lord Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP ISBN: 0773566899 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
Ursula Lord explores the manifestations in narrative structure of epistemological relativism, textual reflexivity, and political inquiry, specifically Conrad's critique of colonialism and imperialism and his concern for the relationship between self and society. The tension between solitude and solidarity manifests itself as a soul divided against itself; an individual torn between engagement and detachment, idealism and cynicism; a dramatized narrator who himself embodies the contradictions between radical individualism and social cohesion; a society that professes the ideal of shared responsibility while isolating the individual guilty of betraying the illusion of cultural or professional solidarity. Conrad's complexity and ambiguity, his conflicting allegiances to the ideal of solidarity versus the terrible insight of unremitting solitude, his grappling with the dilemma of private versus shared meaning, are intrinsic to his political and philosophical thought. The metanarrative focus of Conrad's texts intensifies rather than diminishes their philosophical and political concerns. Formal experimentation and epistemological exploration inevitably entail ethical and social implications. Lord relates these issues with intellectual rigour to the dialectic of individual liberty and collective responsibility that lies at the core of the modern moral and political debate.
Author: Michael Mack Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1501366882 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
Considering the support behind Brexit and Donald Trump's 'America first' policies, this book challenges the idea that they are motivated solely by fear and instead looks at the hope and promises that drive these renewed forms of nationalism. Addressing these neglected motivations within contemporary populism, Michael Mack explores how our current sense of disappointment with our ecological, economic and political state of affairs partakes of a history of failed promises that goes back to the inception of modernity; namely, to Spinoza's radical enlightenment of diversity and equality. Through this innovative approach, Spinoza emerges less as a single isolated figure and more as a sign for an intellectual constellation of thinkers and writers who – from the romantics to contemporary theory and literature – have introduced various shifts in the way we see humanity as being limited and prone to disappointment. Combining intellectual history with literary and scientific theory, the book traces the collapse of traditional values and orders from Spinoza to Nietzsche and then to the literary modernism of Joseph Conrad and postmodernism of Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon.
Author: Yves Hervouet Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521384648 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 370
Book Description
A large-scale account of Conrad's extensive involvement with the French literary tradition, Yves Hervouet's book is a milestone in our understanding of his work. It will have a major impact on Conrad scholarship and as a study of cross-cultural influence, it will be of interest to all students of comparative literature in the period.
Author: Faculté des lettrres et des sciences humaines. Société conradienne française Publisher: Presses Univ. Limoges ISBN: 9782842871697 Category : Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
Ce numéro de L'Époque Conradienne rassemble la plupart des communications présentées lors du colloque international organisé en septembre 1999 à l'Université Lumière - Lyon II sur le thème : Conrad and Lowry : l'esth-éthique de la fiction. Les comparaisons, rapprochements éthiques et divergences esthétiques entre ces deux auteurs dominent donc dans cette livraison et enrichissent notre vision de deux œuvres majeures du XXe siècle. Conrad, moins omniprésent que d'habitude, profite cependant de ces regards croisés qui soulignent, une fois de plus, son rôle fondamental dans l'éclosion de la modernité.
Author: Carola Kaplan Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135874670 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 349
Book Description
This is a collection of original essays by leading Conrad scholars that rereads Conrad in light of his representations of post-colonialism, of empire, imperialism, and of modernism, questions that are once again relevant today.
Author: Bruce Teets Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000040496 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 714
Book Description
Originally published in 1990, this is a comprehensive and annotated bibliography of the writings on Joseph Conrad and his works. Covering the years from 1895 to 1975 it also includes indexes of authors, secondary works, periodicals and newspapers, foreign languages and primary titles. Part of a series of annotated bibliographies on English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 this will be a valuable resource for students of literature.
Author: Richard Ambrosini Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521403498 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
Joseph Conrad's comments about his works have commonly been dismissed as theoretically unsophisticated, while the critical notions of James, Woolf and Joyce have come to shape our understanding of the modern novel. Richard Ambrosini's study of Conrad's Fiction as Critical Discourse makes an original claim for the importance of his theoretical ideas as they are formed, tested, and eventually redefined in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Setting the narrator's discourse in these tales in the context of the dynamic interplay of Conrad's fictional with his non-fictional writings, and of the transformations in his narrative forms, Ambrosini defines Conrad's view of fiction and the artistic ideal underlying his commitment as a writer in a new and challenging way. Conrad's innovatory techniques as a novelist are shown in the continuity of his theoretical enterprise, from the early search for an artistic prose and a personal novel form, to the later dislocations of perspective achieved by manipulation of conventions drawn from popular fiction. This reassessment of Conrad's critical thought offers a new perspective on the transition from the Victorian novel to contemporary fiction.
Author: Kenneth B. Newell
Author: Kenneth B. Newell
Author: Ian Watt
Author: Ursula Lord
Author: Michael Mack
Author: Yves Hervouet
Author: Yoko Okuda
Author: Faculté des lettrres et des sciences humaines. Société conradienne française
Author: Carola Kaplan
Author: Bruce Teets
Author: Richard Ambrosini