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
Results 1-5 of 24
... feelings and relationships , especially those concerned with the passionate and the erotic . So far as the first of these views is concerned , Zdzisław Najder's justly admired and authoritative biography of Conrad offers a useful ...
... feeling for that lonely man who had hardly known anything of a mother's care , and had no experience of any sort of home life . ( 1926 , 24-5 ) In her second memoir , Jessie adds a comment that invites interpretation but that provides ...
... feelings and relationships , especially those concerned with the passionate and the erotic . This is a view that defines politics in a manner reminiscent of a pre - feminist , pre- sexual politics era in which ' politics ' excludes the ...
... ' have spread outside the territory of this single tale . The innocent reading of the tale is usefully exemplified in the opening words of R. L. Mégroz's 1931 account . There is the lonely , proud man of fine feeling.
... feeling of confinement , ' he enters an alley of the gardens . Paradoxically , it is precisely there , while running away , within ' an atmosphere of solitude and coolness , ' amid ' the sounds of music delightfully softened by 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 |