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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... homosexual and he does not write about homosexual desire ; therefore sexuality does not play a significant rôle in his fiction . — The second of the three views that I mention at the start of this Introduction was stated in its clearest ...
... homosexuality , prostitution and contraception . In his short fiction ' Falk ' explicit parallels are repeatedly drawn between the need for food and the need to mate . ' He [ Falk ] was hungry for the girl , terribly hungry , as he had ...
... homosexual desire , escapes the vigilance of the artist searching after the elusive mot juste , concentrating on one kind of exactitude while leaving the chaotic domain of secondary meanings to itself . What seems to be happening is ...
... homosexuality ' is refined and fixed in the public consciousness . ( As Terry Collits points out [ 2005 , 40 ] ... homosexual or homoerotic elements . My second chapter moves back chronologically to Conrad's second published novel ...
... homosexuality in the character of Mrs Fyne , in Chance , only in passing . The treatment is worthy of note to the extent that it offers such strong evidence that Conrad was aware that lesbianism existed , which was not true of all his ...
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 |