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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... 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 richness and complexity ...
... face value . The plot is simple . The aged Il Conde , who lives on the Gulf of Naples because it offers the only climate which does not aggravate his painful and dangerous rheumatic condition , is a fastidious , prudent and conventional ...
... face " and " once their eyes met " or , as he later put it , " he had exchanged glances " with him ' ( 84 ) . Let us for a moment move back from ' Il Conde ' and focus on these two critical accounts of the work . It is significant that ...
... face value , and who Conrad in his own ' Author's Note ' explicitly invites the reader to identify with himself . Even without the publication of the ' Note 26 Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad.
... face value his claim that he is not interested in the young man who resembles this statue and who is occupying the table at which he chooses to sit . Once we start to examine the story in the light of a suspicion that the Count is ...
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 |