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Author: William Freedman
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611173078
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 191
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Book Description
An alternate view of the perplexing and often contradictory fiction of an elusive author Few if any writers in the English language have been cited, praised, chided, or marveled at more routinely than Joseph Conrad for the perplexing evasiveness, contradictoriness, and indeterminacy of their fiction. William Freedman argues that the explanations typically offered for these identifying characteristics of much of Conrad's work are inadequate if not mistaken. Freedman's claim is that the illusiveness of a coherent interpretation of Conrad's novels and shorter fictions is owed not primarily to the inherent slipperiness or inadequacy of language or the consequence of a willful self-deconstruction. Nor is it a product of the writer's philosophical nihilism or a realized aesthetic of suggestive vagueness. Rather, Freedman argues, the perplexing elusiveness of Conrad's fiction is the consequence of a pervasive ambivalence toward threatening knowledge, a protective reluctance and recoil that are not only inscribed in Conrad's tales and novels, but repeatedly declared, defended, and explained in his letters and essays. Conrad's narrators and protagonists often set out on an apparent quest for hidden knowledge or are drawn into one. But repelled or intimidated by the looming consequences of their own curiosity and fervor, they protectively obscure what they have barely glimpsed or else retreat to an armory of practiced distractions. The result is a confusingly choreographed dance of approach and withdrawal, fascination and revulsion, revelation and concealment. The riddling contradictions of these fictions are thus in large measure the result of this ambivalence, their evasiveness the mark of intimidation's triumph over fascination. The idea of dangerous and forbidden knowledge is at least as old as Genesis, and Freedman provides a background for Conrad's recoil from full exposure in the rich admonitory history of such knowledge in theology, myth, philosophy, and literature. He traces Conrad's impassioned, at times pleading case for protective avoidance in the writer's letters, essays, and prefaces, and he elucidates its enactment and its connection to Conrad's signature evasiveness in a number of short stories and novels, with special attention to The Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Under Western Eyes, and The Rescue.
Author: William Freedman
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611173078
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 191
Get Book Here
Book Description
An alternate view of the perplexing and often contradictory fiction of an elusive author Few if any writers in the English language have been cited, praised, chided, or marveled at more routinely than Joseph Conrad for the perplexing evasiveness, contradictoriness, and indeterminacy of their fiction. William Freedman argues that the explanations typically offered for these identifying characteristics of much of Conrad's work are inadequate if not mistaken. Freedman's claim is that the illusiveness of a coherent interpretation of Conrad's novels and shorter fictions is owed not primarily to the inherent slipperiness or inadequacy of language or the consequence of a willful self-deconstruction. Nor is it a product of the writer's philosophical nihilism or a realized aesthetic of suggestive vagueness. Rather, Freedman argues, the perplexing elusiveness of Conrad's fiction is the consequence of a pervasive ambivalence toward threatening knowledge, a protective reluctance and recoil that are not only inscribed in Conrad's tales and novels, but repeatedly declared, defended, and explained in his letters and essays. Conrad's narrators and protagonists often set out on an apparent quest for hidden knowledge or are drawn into one. But repelled or intimidated by the looming consequences of their own curiosity and fervor, they protectively obscure what they have barely glimpsed or else retreat to an armory of practiced distractions. The result is a confusingly choreographed dance of approach and withdrawal, fascination and revulsion, revelation and concealment. The riddling contradictions of these fictions are thus in large measure the result of this ambivalence, their evasiveness the mark of intimidation's triumph over fascination. The idea of dangerous and forbidden knowledge is at least as old as Genesis, and Freedman provides a background for Conrad's recoil from full exposure in the rich admonitory history of such knowledge in theology, myth, philosophy, and literature. He traces Conrad's impassioned, at times pleading case for protective avoidance in the writer's letters, essays, and prefaces, and he elucidates its enactment and its connection to Conrad's signature evasiveness in a number of short stories and novels, with special attention to The Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Under Western Eyes, and The Rescue.
Author: William Freedman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611173062
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Freedman's claim is that the illusiveness of a coherent interpretation of Conrad's novels and shorter fictions is owed not primarily to the inherent slipperiness or inadequacy of language or the consequence of a willful self-deconstruction. Nor is it a product of the writer's philosophical nihilism or a realized aesthetic of suggestive vagueness. Rather, Freedman argues, the perplexing elusiveness of Conrad's fiction is the consequence of a pervasive ambivalence toward threatening knowledge, a protective reluctance and recoil that are not only inscribed in Conrad's tales and novels, but repeatedly declared, defended, and explained in his letters and essays. Conrad's narrators and protagonists often set out on an apparent quest for hidden knowledge or are drawn into one. But repelled or intimidated by the looming consequences of their own curiosity and fervor, they protectively obscure what they have barely glimpsed or else retreat to an armory of practiced distractions. The result is a confusingly choreographed dance of approach and withdrawal, fascination and revulsion, revelation and concealment. The riddling contradictions of these fictions are thus in large measure the result of this ambivalence, their evasiveness the mark of intimidation's triumph over fascination.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Xiaoling Yao
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003802281
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
Drawing on recent studies on life writing, memory, the narrative turn, and psychology, Conrad, Autobiographical Remembering, and the Making of Narrative Identity is the first major work that extensively explores the dynamic interplay between Conrad’s autobiographical remembering and storytelling in relation to his identity construction within a historical and cultural context. This unique perspective makes the book particularly attractive for students, teachers, and researchers of Conrad. Contrary to the prevalent "achievement-and-decline" paradigm that implies a decline in quality of Conrad’s works in his later period, this volume contends that Conrad’s later works continue to engage with the complex questions of memory, identity, and culture, demonstrating a sustained commitment to exploring the intricacies of the human experiences. Essential reading for Conrad enthusiasts, but also for those who seek to explore how memory studies in literature intersect with psychology, philosophy, and cultural studies.
Author: Hugh Epstein
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474449883
Category : Impressionism in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
This book reads the highly descriptive impressionist writings of Hardy and Conrad together in the light of a shared attention to sight and sound.
Author: Sarah Louise MacMillen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793628068
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 181
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Book Description
Literature in the Dawn of Sociological Theory: Stories That Are Telling focuses on a selection of novelists from the early 1800s to the early 1900s and their connections to the insights of Classical Sociological Theory and the sociological imagination. This monograph also considers the aesthetic, sociological, and literary insights of Theodor Adorno, György Lukács, Fredric Jameson, Raymond Williams, Wolf Lepenies, Franco Moretti, Lucien Goldmann, and John Orr. The main chapters discuss the fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The concluding chapter reflects on the dawn of modernity, especially the birth of capitalism and the plague crisis via Boccaccio’s Florence, significant to The Decameron. Throughout the text, Sarah Louise MacMillen considers these “stories that are telling” in light of social issues today. She presents a case for highlighting the authors of the past, wherein these fictional accounts anticipate some of our contemporary social problems and social movements. These dynamics include the environmental crisis, the effects of globalization, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, “cancel culture,” debates about gender nonconformity, and secularization. Finally, MacMillen reflects on the need for solidarity in shifting patterns of social existence and rebuilding post-COVID.
Author: Joseph Conrad
Publisher: Modernista
ISBN: 9181080913
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 51
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Book Description
»The Secret Sharer« is a short story by Joseph Conrad, originally published in 1910. JOSEPH CONRAD [1857–1924] was born in Ukraine to Polish parents, went to sea at the age of seventeen, and ended his career as a captain in the English merchant navy. His most famous work is the novella Heart of Darkness [1899], adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola in 1979 as Apocalypse Now.
Author: J. H. Stape
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521484848
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
Leading scholars provide a comprehensive introduction to the work of Joseph Conrad.
Author: Joseph Conrad
Publisher: Bantam Classics
ISBN: 055389854X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
Heart Of Darkness. The story of the civilized, enlightened Mr. Kurtz who embarks on a harrowing "night journey" into the savage heart of Africa, only to find his dark and evil soul. The Secret Sharer. The saga of a young, inexperienced skipper forced to decide the fate of a fugitive sailor who killed a man in self-defense. As he faces his first moral test the skipper discovers a terrifying truth -- and comes face to face with the secret itself. Heart Of Darkness and The Secret Sharer draw on actual events and people that Conrad met or heard about during his many far-flung travels. In portraying men whose incredible journeys on land and at sea are also symbolic voyages into their own mysterious depths, these two masterful works give credence to Conrad's acclaim as a major psychological writer.
Author: Joseph Conrad
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612192505
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
There is a degree of bliss too intense for elation. This little-known novella from one of the masters of the form is so unusual for Joseph Conrad's work in several respects, although not in its exotic maritime setting or its even more exotic prose—it is unusual in that it is one of his very few works to feature a woman as a leading character, and to take the form of a romance. Still, it's a Conradian romance: a sweeping saga set in the Indian Ocean basin, against a turbulent background of barely suppressed hostilities between Dutch and British merchant navies, told by one of Conrad's classically detached narrators. In the end, the unique perspective of the sharply etched character of Freya is one of Conrad's most piercing studies of how the lust for power can drive men to greatness—or its opposite. The Art of The Novella Series Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.
