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 56
... 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 one devoid of sexual secrets ...
... word itself occurs only once in his writings , in Part Two , Chapter 3 of Chance ( 1913 ) : Captain Anthony is the son of ' a delicate erotic poet of a markedly refined and autocratic temperament ' ( 309 ) . The mention is not without ...
... words signify . In like manner , although he would doubtless not have been familiar with the present - day , post- Freudian meaning of terms such as ' sublimation ' and ' displacement ' , Conrad's depiction of , for example , Charles ...
... 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 sexual energy with public and ...
... word ' sexuality ' to 1836 , and he adds that the word only achieves common currency in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ( 1997 , 3 ) . During the period in which Conrad is writing , from the early 1890s to 1924 ...
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 |