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 53
... passage that begins with the words ' The men he loves ' can be so lacking in any sexual implications . Even such an acute observer of sexual frissons as Woolf seems to see Conrad's fictional ( and , doubtless , biographical ) world as ...
... passage in Chance , the character- narrator Marlow comments of Mrs Fyne that The good woman was making up to her husband's chess - player simply because she had scented in him that small portion of ' femininity , ' that drop of superior ...
... passage is that at which the word ' confused ' occurs . Reading the great political novels - Heart of Darkness , Nostromo , The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes - I never have a sense that there is a confusion of the element of ...
... passage in which the Count relates to the narrator the events leading in to the ' outrage ' , the reader whose suspicions have been raised starts like Othello - to respond even to the slightest clues that the Count is not altogether ...
... passage . The Count says that he takes no notice of the young man at whose table he has chosen to sit , but he is able to describe his appearance and behaviour in some detail , and he has looked at him carefully enough to see him two ...
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 |