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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... hints and Ford's romanticized gossip counsel skepticism . [ ... ] Along with the fact that Conrad felt very much at ease in cabarets and nightclubs – all this is in keeping with the stereotype of the husband who now and again amuses ...
... hint of sexuality , it is odd that Dolan's comparison does not cause him to question either the Count's account of himself , or the narrator's reliability . ' Almost immediately the narrator gives us , in one line , the essential fact ...
... hints and suggestions that there is more to this ' pathetic tale ' than meets the eye . In his ' Author's Note ' , for example , there is a marked sense that Conrad is playing with the reader when he writes that ' All I can say is that ...
... hints of homosexual desire or tabooed forms of sexual experience in their fiction . The prosecution of Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover for obscenity in 1960 neglected to draw attention to the depiction of anal intercourse in the ...
... hints and suggestions rather than unambiguous information . It is well - known that Henry James liked to prompt the reader's imagination in the direction of unstated but sexually suggestive meanings . In the Preface to the 1908 New York ...
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 |