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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... reports on his discussion of the sexual side of Conrad's life with the author's fellow countryman Jósef Retinger - who on his own account saw Conrad as a rival for the affections of Jane Anderson . Retinger , who knew quite a lot about ...
... reports that ' Retinger , though unwillingly , did finally concede that there were some , but described them contemptuously , in French , as " de louches passes ” ( Halvorson and Watt 1991 , 69 ) . The tendency to slip into French when ...
... reports that all of Conrad's important psychoanalytical biographers ' concur with [ Bernard C. ] Meyer's influential assumption that Conrad may have been “ disturbed by the sexual aspects of marriage ” ( 2002 , 81 ) , and Jessie's report ...
... reports of third parties who observed them together , Robert Lange's assertion that the ' special kind of affection ' that Conrad ' sought and could use was not supplied by his wife or children , but primarily from four young male ...
... reports that the novelist ' never ceased to repeat that the easiest solution [ to " social problems " ] could be found in what he called the French system of two children per family and in birth control ' ( 1941 , 65 ) – a view that ...
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 |