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 80
... man was about as uninterested in sexuality and the erotic as it is possible for any mature male not technically a eunuch to be , and that this biographical truth is reflected or refracted in various ways in his fiction . Second , while ...
... man thinks before his wedding and on his wedding night does not necessarily fix his attitudes towards sexuality for life . After all , Conrad announced to Jessie that he did not expect to live long and that they would have no children ...
... 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 no help in setting bounds ...
... man and a woman is not congenial to the early Conrad's creativity ' ( 65 ) . — Moser also blames Conrad's attempt to write about love ( not sexuality ) , for inadequacies in the better work and for the period of his artistic ' decline ...
... man , that his fiction has been read with the assumption and – importantly – the expectation , that it will have little to do with sex and the erotic . Such an approach to the fiction generates readings that either exclude or omit any ...
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 |