Conrad's Decentered Fiction

Brings the vibrant details of Conrad's writing to the forefront for study and analyzes newly-discovered artworks, maps, and manuscript pages.

Johan Adam Warodell (Author)

9781316512197, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 March 2022

290 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'… a valuable and unique contribution to Conrad scholarship … Recommended' J. G. Peters, Choice

What are the fingerprints of Joseph Conrad's fiction? This richly illustrated book argues that Conrad's vibrant details set him apart as a writer and brings them from the margins to the center for study. With recently discovered primary sources - including drawings and maps in Conrad's own hand - this book travels widely across Conrad's fiction and explores its interest in marginal voices, characters and details. It produces a new picture of Conrad as a writer, and the first picture of Conrad as an amateur sketch artist. Introducing new critical vocabulary and applying new names from art history to Conrad studies, the book ranges across cartography, fashion, analytic philosophy, manuscript studies, and animal studies to discover Conrad as an artist operating across and between different media. Offered as a complement to the abstract approaches of much literary theory, this detail-driven and margin-focused monograph mirrors the characteristic granular nature of Conrad's fiction.

Part I. Preprint Documents: Paper, Pen and Ink: 1. Doodles and The Shadow-Line
2. Maps and Victory, 'Geography and Some Explorers', 'The Secret Sharer', and An Outcast of the Islands
3. Drawings and The Sisters
Part II. Published Texts: Working Method and Philosophy: 4. Decoding and 'Heart of Darkness'
5. Distraction and 'Heart of Darkness', Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes
6. Details and The Secret Agent
Part III. Patterns and Preoccupations: Marginal Voices and Characters: 7. Voices and The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
8. Hats, Nostromo, 'The Secret Sharer', and The Secret Agent
9. Animals, 'Heart of Darkness', and 'The Planter of Malata'.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literature: history & criticism [DS]