Overview

This book takes a postcritical perspective on Joseph Conrad’s central texts, including Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, and Lord Jim. Whereas critique is a form of reading that prioritizes suspicion, unmasking, and demystifying, postcritique ascribes positive value to the knowledge, affect, ethics, and politics that emerge from literature. The essays in this collection recognize the dark elements in Conrad’s fiction—deceit, vanity, avarice, lust, cynicism, and cruelty—yet they perceive hopefulness as well. Conrad’s skepticism unveils the dark heart of politics, and his critical heritage can feed our fear that humanity is incapable of improving. This Conrad is a well-known figure, but there is another, neglected Conrad that this book aims to bring to light, one who delves into the politics of hope as well as the politics of fear.  Chapters 1 and 2 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

Full Product Details

Author:   Jay Parker ,  Joyce Wexler
Publisher:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Imprint:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Edition:   1st ed. 2021
Weight:   0.336kg
ISBN:  

9783030725013

ISBN 10:   3030725014
Pages:   233
Publication Date:   18 September 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

"Chapter 1: IntroductionPart I: Finding Hope—Recuperative Reading, Reparative ReadingChapter 2: Quixotic Conrad: Betrayal, Conversion, and Flight, Jay ParkerChapter 3: ""The new sun is rising"": Conrad, Women, and Hope, Rachel HollanderPart II: Understanding the Politics of FearChapter 4: Doubling Down on the Politics of Fear, Opening Up the Politics of Hope, Joyce WexlerChapter 5: Joseph Conrad’s “Strange Air of Finality”: Negative Affect and the Politics of Fear in “The Tale, Jarica Linn WattsChapter 6: ""Pulsating Wrongfully"":Critique, Cliché, and The Secret Agent, James BrophyPart III: Ethics and AestheticsChapter 7: ""Heart of Darkness"" and the Memory of the Holocaust, Riccardo CapoferroChapter 8: The Beating Heart of Sublime Empire: The Secret Agent as Sequel to “Heart of Darkness”, Jana M. GilesChapter 9: Cross-cultural Accord in the Malay Fiction: The Performative Politics of Conrad’s Eastern World, Mark DegganChapter 10: ""Some Knowledge of Yourself"": “Heart of Darkness” in the Twenty-First Century Literature Classroom—An Ethical Approach, Anna Lindhé."

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Author Information

Jay Parker is Assistant Professor in the English Department of the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. He has published articles on Conrad in relation to liberalism and to justice in Textual Practice, Law and Literature and The Conradian. He was awarded the Juliet McLauchlan Prize in 2012 and the Bruce Harkness Young Scholar Award in 2015 for his research on Conrad, and is fiction editor of the Hong Kong Review of Books, as well as Advisory Editor for The Conradian. He is currently completing a book on Conrad and Liberalism. Joyce Wexler is Professor Emerita of English at Loyola University Chicago, USA. She is the author of Violence without God: The Rhetorical Dilemma of Twentieth-Century Writers (2016), Who Paid for Modernism? Art, Money, and the Fiction of Conrad, Joyce, and Lawrence (1997), Laura Riding: A Bibliography (1981), and Laura Riding’s Pursuit of Truth (1979). She currently serves as President of the Joseph Conrad Society of America.

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