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This book is about books that recount the story of encountering another book. There are various versions of the story told and retold from the heyday of imperialism up to the present day (Homi Bhabha calls it the trope of 'the discovery of the English book'); by considering each of these versions carefully, we may also give an alternative account of twentieth-century 'English literature' as the site of an intercultural discourse. This project is very much inspired by debate on postcolonial theory, namely, the debate between Said and Bhabha. Part I is devoted to the discussion of Conrad, especially of Heart of Darkness, and investigates how the novella has continually been reproduced to the extent that it represents 'the English Book' of colonial/postcolonial literatures. The chapter on Hugh Clifford (Ch.3) is virtually the first intensive critique of his novels, such as Saleh (1908), with a particular focus on their intertextual relations with Conrad's texts. Part II examines how the story of the English Book is repeated and revised in the texts of the following authors: Joyce Cary, Isak Dinesen, V. S. Naipaul, Kaiko Takeshi, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.
This is an original reading of Mikhail Bakhtin in the context of Western philosophical traditions and counter-traditions. The book portrays Bakhtin as a Modernist thinker torn between an ideological secularity and a profound religious sensibility, invariably concerned with questions of ethics and impelled to turn from philosophy to literature as another way of knowing. Most major studies of Bakhtin highlight the fragmented and apparently discontinuous nature of his work. Erdinast-Vulcan emphasizes, instead, the underlying coherence of the Bakhtinian project, reading its inherent ambivalences as an intersection of philosophical, literary, and psychological insights into the dynamics of embodied subjectivity. Bakhtin's turn to literature and poetry, as well as the dissatisfactions that motivated it, align him with three other "exilic" Continental philosophers who were his contemporaries: Bergson, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. Adopting Bakhtin's own open-ended approach to the human sciences, the book stages a series of philosophical encounters between these thinkers, highlighting their respective itineraries and impasses, and generating a Bakhtinian synergy of ideas.
The Discerning Narrator sheds new light on Joseph Conrad’s controversial critique of modernity and modernization by reading his work through an Aristotelian lens. The book proposes that we need Aristotle – a key figure in Conrad’s education – to recognize the profound significance of Conrad’s artistic vision. Offering Aristotelian analyses of Conrad’s letters, essays, and four works of fiction, Alexia Hannis illuminates the philosophical roots and literary implications of Conrad’s critique of modernity. Hannis turns to Aristotle’s ethical formulations to trace what she calls "the discerning narrator" in Conrad’s oeuvre: a compassionate yet sceptical guide to appraising char...
Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Free Will and Determinism: A Philosophical Introduction -- Free Will and Determinism in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Britain -- Conrad and the Problem of Free Will -- Heart of Darkness and the Empire Machine -- Nostromo and the Mechanics of History -- The Secret Agent and the Urban Jungle -- Conclusion -- Works Cited.
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Diasporic Philosophy and Counter-Education addresses the challenges inflicted by the celebrated "new progressivism". It confronts the current omnipotent progressive anti-humanistic fire and its triumphant anti-Western redemptive crusade at all levels and dimensions of life under the post-metaphysical sky. In this book Diasporic counter-education does not surrender to the celebrated temptations of new-age nomadism as an alternative to the postmodern pleasure-machine's promise. It attempts to reach beyond the total war against the Jewish spirit and its manifestation in Western oppressive identity. It refuses any version of the continuum, "radical" or "conservative" self-indulgence, as well as ...
Graham Greene once wrote that «Innocence is a kind of insanity.» This book examines the many shades of innocence in Greene's characters: the «blank innocence,» «depraved innocence,» and «absurd innocence» of Anthony Farrant; the piteous innocence of Pinkie; the simple innocence of Raven; the pure innocence of Father Quixote; the paradoxical innocence of the Whisky Priest; the inverted innocence of Sarah Miles; the faithful innocence of Father Rivas, the Dog-Ears Priest; the intrusive innocence of Doctor Fischer; and the playful innocence of Harry Lime. The complex concept of innocence is found to be a prevailing theme in Greene's novels.
This study examines the relations between the work of the Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad and the French Nobel Prize winner André Gide. Gide's translation of Conrad's Typhoon is read as a work belonging paradoxically to the oeuvres of both writers, where their respective preoccupations meet with illuminating results. Focusing also on other major works by Conrad and Gide, the study suggests that the intertextual and personal interaction between these two masters of 20th Century fiction was governed by processes of identification and projection, conflict between master and disciple and a consequent resistant reading of texts, and confrontation with linguistic and cultural heterogeneity. Issues of translation theory, psychoanalysis and intertextuality are brought together to offer a glimpse of a possible dialogue between literature and ethics. This study will be of interest to students and researchers in English, French and Comparative Literature.
Joseph Conrad is a key figure in modernist fiction, whose innovative work engages with many of the crucial philosophical, moral and political concerns of the twentieth century. This collection of major critical readings of his work is arranged according to the issues which each critic addresses, issues which are of crucial importance, and in many cases remain controversial, within contemporary literary theory and criticism. Following an opening section on the critical tradition, indicating how the study of Conrad's work has been politicised since the 1970s, there are sections on 'Narrative, Textuality and Interpretation', 'Imperialism', 'Gender and Sexuality', 'Class and Ideology', and 'Mode...
Our Conrad is about the American reception of Joseph Conrad and its crucial role in the formation of American modernism. Although Conrad did not visit the country until a year before his death, his fiction served as both foil and mirror to America's conception of itself and its place in the world. Peter Mallios reveals the historical and political factors that made Conrad's work valuable to a range of prominent figures—including Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Richard Wright, Woodrow Wilson, and Theodore and Edith Roosevelt—and explores regional differences in Conrad's reception. He proves that foreign-authored writing can be as integral a part of United States culture as that of any native. Arguing that an individual writer's apparent (national, gendered, racial, political) identity is not always a good predictor of the diversity of voices and dialogues to which he gives rise, this exercise in transnational comparativism participates in post-Americanist efforts to render American Studies less insular and parochial.