Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph ConradAwarded third place for The Adam Gillon Book Award in Conrad Studies 2009 The book presents a sustained critique of the interlinked (and contradictory) views that the fiction of Joseph Conrad is largely innocent of any interest in or concern with sexuality and the erotic, and that when Conrad does attempt to depict sexual desire or erotic excitement then this results in bad writing. Jeremy Hawthorn argues for a revision of the view that Conrad lacks understanding of and interest in sexuality. He argues that the comprehensiveness of Conrad's vision does not exclude a concern with the sexual and the erotic, and that this concern is not with the sexual and the erotic as separate spheres of human life, but as elements dialectically related to those matters public and political that have always been recognized as central to Conrad's fictional achievement. The book will open Conrad's fiction to readings enriched by the insights of critics and theorists associated with Gender Studies and Post-colonialism. |
From inside the book
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... Count's own report at face value and silently excising the rôle and even the presence of the intradiegetic narrator . During the years of New Critical hegemony the innocent reading is developed in certain standard ways that stress the ...
... Count who chooses to sit at the table already occupied by the young man . A decade following its publication Wills's account of the tale was to be subjected to considerable dismissive scorn by John V. Hagopian in his 1965 article ' The ...
... Count meeting while gazing at the statue of a beautiful and naked male youth whose posture is picked up later in the tale in the posture of the young robber . And it passes over , too , the associations with sexual excess - especially ...
... count . He is a child - like hedonist and a most pleasant man . We regard him , in other words , with the same indulgence with which we regard children . Part of our shock of outrage at the ' abominable outrage ' which befalls him is ...
... Count , to the ancient Romans were suggestive of decadence and immorality . It was here in Naples , the most Greek of Roman cities , that the citizens of Rome ventured to indulge their senses and lusts . For example , Capri , where the ...
Contents
1 | |
17 | |
2 The exotic and the erotic in An Outcast of the Islands and Heart of Darkness | 61 |
3 The erotics of cruelty in A Smile of Fortune The Planter of Malata The Secret Agent Victory and Freya of the Seven Isles ... | 77 |
4 Voyeurism in The ShadowLine and Under Western Eyes | 131 |
Conclusion and? | 153 |
Notes | 159 |
Bibliography | 166 |
Index | 173 |