You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The four tales in this volume share autobiographical origins in Conrad's experience at sea and his exile from Poland. They vividly present Conrad's preoccupation with the theme of solidarity, challenged from without by the elements and from within by human doubts and fears. This revised edition uses the English first edition texts and has a new chronology and bibliography.
The Life and the Art: A Study of Conrad's Under Western Eyes has a twofold origin. Over the past ten years, as an associate editor of the prospective Cambridge Edition of Under Western Eyes, the author, Keith Carabine, has worked on the genesis and composition of the novel in its several versions and on its literary, ideological, social, and historical contexts. At the same time during these years he has taught seminar courses on Conrad for undergraduates and on Conrad and Dostoevsky for postgraduates. This interpenetration of teaching and research constantly reminded the author that his many hours devoted to textual minutiae and manuscript variations or to a study of Conrad's Polish backgro...
From the contents: Conrad's debt to Marguerite Poradowska (Susan Jones).- Conrad and Alfred Russel Wallace (Amy Houston).- Conrad's The idiots and Maupassant's La mere aux monstres (Gene M. Moore).- Conrad, Anatole France, and the early French Romantic tradition: some influences (Owen Knowles).- 'One can learn something from Balzac': Conrad and Balzac (J.H. Stape).
Werner Senn’s Conrad’s Narrative Voice draws on the methodology of linguistic stylistics and the analysis of narrative discourse to discuss Joseph Conrad’s perception of the role and the limitations of language. Tracing recurrent linguistic patterns allows Senn to demonstrate that Conrad’s view of the radical indeterminacy of the world is conveyed on the most basic levels of the author’s (often criticised) verbal style but permeates his work at all levels of the narrative. Detailed stylistic analysis also reveals the importance, to Conrad, of the spoken word, of oral communication. Senn argues that the narrators’ compulsive efforts to make their readers see and understand reflect Conrad’s ethics of human solidarity in a world he depicts as hostile, enigmatic and often senseless.
Up-to-date and extensive revision of Najder's much-acclaimed scholarly biography of Conrad, employing newly accessible sources. Joseph Conrad is not only one of the world's great writers of English -- and world -- literature, but was a writer who lived a particularly full and interesting life. For the biographer this is a double-edged sword, however: thereare many periods for which documentation is uncommonly difficult. Zdzislaw Najder's meticulously documented biography first appeared in English in 1983, garnering high praise as the best, most complete biography of Conrad. Najder's command of English, French, Polish, and Russian allowed him access to a greater variety of sources than any ot...
A Portrait in Letters: Correspondence to and about Joseph Conrad offers an annotated selection of letters to Conrad preserved in widely scattered archives. Augmented by letters about his work and personality, the volume also contains a calendar of all known surviving correspondence addressed to him. An essential supplement to the Cambridge Edition of The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, A Portrait in Letters presents Conrad in the round, offering glimpses not only of the working writer but of the husband, parent, and friend. The letters offer new information about Conrad's literary circle and fill out numerous details about his career. Brief, authoritative biographies of the correspondents are included, and an introduction, description of editorial principles, and full index to the volume provide the scholarly contextualization and tools necessary for easy access to its contents.
Characterized by Conrad himself as his “most deeply meditated novel,” Under Western Eyes enjoyed a warm reception on its publication in October 1911. In the century since it has rewarded readers with various pleasures. Exploring the intertwined subjects of personal morality, the nature of the State, national character and identity, and covertly digging into the tensions of his family's past, the novel is the last of Conrad's sustained excursions into overtly political territory. This collection of eleven essays considers Conrad's achievement from several perspectives. Opening with a provocative essay on the text's genesis, it surveys intertextual relations and influences, considers its ethical challenges, its psychological appeal to our time, and its contemporary reception and reception in Russia. Addressed to the scholar of literary Modernism, “Under Western Eyes”: Centennial Essays offers a vivid snapshot of current critical technologies. This well-balanced collection should help the student and classroom teacher alike in pursuing further the novel's richly layered interests.
HEART OF DARKNESS * AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS * KARAIN * YOUTH The finest of all Conrad's tales, 'Heart of Darkness' is set in an atmosphere of mystery and menace, and tells of Marlow's perilous journey up the Congo River to relieve his employer's agent, the renowned and formidable Mr Kurtz. What he sees on his journey, and his eventual encounter with Kurtz, horrify and perplex him, and call into question the very bases of civilization and human nature. Endlessly reinterpreted by critics and adapted for film, radio, and television, the story shows Conrad at his most intense and sophisticated. The other three tales in this volume depict corruption and obsession, and question racial assumptions. ...