DOCSLIB.ORG

Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes and a Personal Record

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes and a Personal Record University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2009 One of Us: Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes and A Personal Record Torgeir Ehler University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Other English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Ehler, Torgeir, "One of Us: Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes and A Personal Record" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 802. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/802 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. One of Us: Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes and A Personal Record __________ A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of Arts and Humanities University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Torgeir Ehler June 2009 Advisor: Jan Gorak ©Copyright by Torgeir Ehler 2009 All Rights Reserved Author: Torgeir Ehler Title: One of Us: Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes and A Personal Record Advisor: Jan Gorak Degree Date: June 2009 Abstract This present work explores the relationship of Joseph Conrad’s status as a Polish exile to his creative and biographical work. Its main focus is on the tandem publications of the novel Under Western Eyes and his autobiographical volume A Personal Record, both published within a year of each other and written contemporaneously. The first chapter is a short biographical survey of Conrad’s life and addresses some later biographical works by his wife, among others. An overview of critical works that deal with Under Western Eyes is presented in the second chapter. An investigation into narrative structure and its use in creating a heteroglossic text is investigated in the third chapter. How this strategy reflects Conrad’s personal stake in the novel and how the novel and its creation affected the author’s ability to cope with his own homo-duplex geographies is also addressed herein. The fourth chapter then concerns itself with Conrad’s attempt to create a truly heteroglossic, autobiographically based persona for public consumption in Britain, while keeping true to his function as a ‘cultural bridge’. An early effort at communicating the exile’s predicament and failure to bridge the cultural divide in the story ‘Amy Foster’ is taken up in the fifth and final chapter. The legacy of Conrad’s effort is also discussed herein as relevant to the work of Milan Kundera and Erich Maria Remarque. ii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Joseph Conrad: A Polish-Englishman 9 I. 9 II. 28 III. 31 IV. 35 V. 38 VI. 41 VII. 45 Chapter 2: Under Western Eyes: Critical Assessments and Diagnoses 52 I: An Excursion into the Center 52 Chapter 3: Under Western Eyes 75 I: Story and the Reader 75 II: The Story Proper 79 III: The Teacher of Languages 88 IV: Homo-Duplex: Joseph Conrad’s Invention of the Self and the 99 Familiar Ground V: The Writer and the Narrator: Conrad’s Normalizing Efforts 122 through the Fiction of Under Western Eyes Chapter 4: Bridging the Channel 135 Chapter 5: Appearances, Facts, and Intent: Conrad as “One of Us” 172 I: Coding the Message 172 II: The Shock of Finally Landing: “Amy Foster” 177 III: Remembering to Forget: Conrad Soldiers on 187 Epilogue: Conrad’s Legacy 195 Appendix A: Abbreviations 206 Bibliography 207 iii Introduction The exile knows that in a secular and contingent world, homes are always provisional. Borders and barriers, which enclose us within the safety of familiar territory, can also become prisons, and are often defended beyond reason or necessity. Exiles cross borders, break barriers of thought and experience. […] both the new and the old environments are vivid, actual, occurring together contrapuntally. […] Exile is never the state of being satisfied, placid, or secure. […] Exile is life led outside habitual order. It is nomadic, decentered, contrapuntal; but no sooner does one get accustomed to it than its unsettling force erupts anew. (185- 86) Edward Said Reflections on Exile “… I was put across the border. You know that from a legal point of view we haven’t the right to live anywhere without papers—and that most of us haven’t yet been able to make up our minds to commit suicide. That’s the reason we bother you.” (222) “What’s your name now?” Morosow asked. “Still Ravic. I didn’t mention this name at the police station. … I didn’t want to give up Ravic. I like it as a name.” (230-31) E.M Remarque Arch of Triumph In examining Joseph Conrad’s work, it is imperative to consider the writer’s life and milieu. Issues of identity and fidelity – the latter one of Conrad’s favorite principles and tenets in life – are some of the forces that exert the greatest influence on his work. The several stages of his life: as the child of ‘dissident’ parents in 1 Russian and Austrian parts of partitioned Poland, as accompanying his exiled parents – thus in effect an exile himself –to a Russian bog at the age of nearly five, as a seaman in France and later as a seafarer and officer in the British merchant marine, a British subject, and, finally, a British novelist living on British soil and married to an English woman are considered here as types of geographies within and among which the author navigated. The term ‘geography’ as it is used in this study encompasses not only physical cartography, but also those geographies constructed through cultural and socializing influences, as well as by the individual in order for the self to situate itself properly within a socio-cultural space. Therefore, the term ‘socio-cultural geographies’ is meant to denote the cultural and socializing influences of a cultural entity such as Poland or England. This entity may exist on a physical and political map, but it may not. Socio-cultural geographies of Poland, for example, remained largely intact despite its political non-existence during the majority of Conrad’s lifetime, for example. ‘Personal geographies’ are used to denote those influences of socio-political geographies on the individual, mainly Joseph Conrad in this study, and the manner in which that individual’s experience has been processed and recombined from the larger into the personal. Since Conrad’s personal geographies include many facets and combinations of the larger wholes and since it is arguable that his point of view is always adapting and reacting to his surroundings, the term ‘provisional-personal geographies’ is used to denote these states of existence. Linguistics also play a role in creating geographies, thanks to cultural and social norms being linguistically 2 inscribed back onto a society and so onto its members. This creates a cyclical effect within which the socio-cultural sphere is interconnected with the linguistic sphere. Therefore, ‘linguistic geographies’ are similar to, yet not identical with socio-cultural geographies when it comes to Conrad. His multi-lingual socio-cultural geographies encompass differing facets of all the types of geographies mentioned to such a degree that it becomes nearly impossible to speak of one specific linguistic geography. Thus his personal geographies are always variant. Such personal geographies are termed ‘provisional’ since their particular configurations are not consistent over time and are dependent on passing circumstances. At the root of a specific personal-provisional geography within which Conrad seems to have functioned and which was based upon particular situational circumstances and requirements, however, lies another type of geography from which any and all specific personal-provisional geographies originated. This type of geography is termed ‘zero geography’. This ‘zero geography’ is pre-linguistic, yet contains what can be termed the ‘center’ and contains all the types of experiences and knowledge Conrad had absorbed. It is from this amalgamation of experience and knowledge that the specific personal geographies emerge through a commitment to a set of circumstances. The fact that it contains all of Conrad’s cultural and linguistic capabilities allows for its understanding of situations and concepts that any single of his provisional geographies alone cannot. Its pre-linguistic state allows for the translation of its understanding of socio-cultural concepts and situations into any of the languages available to it. This in turn allows Conrad to function as an interpreter 3 or a ‘cultural bridge’ between the Eastern and the Western cultural camps, much in the same manner that Poland and Central Europe translate both cultural spheres in order to maintain their cultural equilibrium. Yet, unlike Central Europe, Conrad does not only interpret in order to maintain his own provisional geographies, but also in order to explain one cultural sphere to the other. Moreover, Conrad’s conditioning through his exile in the West allows him better to interpret for a Western, English- speaking audience because of his partial assimilation into its socio-cultural fabric. His ‘zero geography’ can be said to contain the necessary tools to perform the tasks of a ‘cultural bridge’ best when faced with an English-speaking audience, though it also is able to interpret the East to itself through ‘Western Eyes’ and the Center in a covert manner, as will later be seen in the analysis of A Personal Record. Along with personal geographies, that is, geographies that pertain to one’s particular biography and are created through the process of living, a major consideration in this study is also Conrad’s original physical and cultural geography.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Who Put Kurtz on the Congo? Harry White, Irving L
    Who Put Kurtz on the Congo? Harry White, Irving L. Finston Conradiana, Volume 42, Number 1-2, Spring/Summer 2010, pp. 81-92 (Article) Published by Texas Tech University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cnd.2010.0010 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/452495 Access provided at 9 Oct 2019 05:10 GMT from USP-Universidade de São Paulo Who Put Kurtz on the Congo? HARRYWHITEANDIRVINGL.FINSTON Our article included in this issue, “The Two River Narratives in ‘Heart of Darkness,’” showed that Joseph Conrad imagined Kurtz’s Inner Station to be located on the Kasai River and not on the Congo as has been gener- ally assumed. We now ask how one of the most important, influential, and widely read and studied works of modern fiction has been so con- sistently and unquestioningly misread for so long on such a basic level. In what follows we show that something akin to a cover-up was initi- ated by the author regarding the location and direction of Charlie Mar- low’s voyage. We will then reveal the primary source for many of the current interpretations and misinterpretations of “Heart of Darkness” by showing how one very influential scholar was the first to place Kurtz’s station on the wrong river. Nowhere in any of his writings did Conrad report that Marlow’s venture into the heart of darkness followed his own voyage from Stan- ley Pool to Stanley Falls. Nowhere in “Heart of Darkness” does it say that Marlow voyages up the Congo to find Kurtz.
    [Show full text]
  • Your Guide to the Classic Literature Collection
    Your Guide to the Classic Literature Collection. Electronic texts for use with Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000. Revised March 27, 2017. Your Guide to the Classic Literature Collection – March 22, 2017. © Kurzweil Education, a Cambium Learning Company. All rights reserved. Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000 are trademarks of Kurzweil Education, a Cambium Learning Technologies Company. All other trademarks used herein are the properties of their respective owners and are used for identification purposes only. Part Number: 125516. UPC: 634171255169. 11 12 13 14 15 BNG 14 13 12 11 10. Printed in the United States of America. 1 Introduction Introduction Kurzweil Education is pleased to release the Classic Literature Collection. The Classic Literature Collection is a portable library of approximately 1,800 electronic texts, selected from public domain material available from Web sites such as www.gutenberg.net. You can easily access the contents from any of Kurzweil Education products: Kurzweil 1000™, Kurzweil 3000™ for the Apple® Macintosh® and Kurzweil 3000 for Microsoft® Windows®. The collection is also available from the Universal Library for Web License users on K3000+firefly. Some examples of the contents are: • Literary classics by Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Hermann Hesse, Henry James, William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy and Oscar Wilde. • Children’s classics by L. Frank Baum, Brothers Grimm, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, and Mark Twain. • Classic texts from Aristotle and Plato. • Scientific works such as Einstein’s “Relativity: The Special and General Theory.” • Reference materials, including world factbooks, famous speeches, history resources, and United States law.
    [Show full text]
  • Maureen Dowd Treaties of the Sea
    Maureen Dowd Treaties Of The Sea Mose often crystallized coaxingly when antagonistic Chance sepulcher inscriptively and matriculates her disulfiram. Biff sharps his perturbation deifying nutritively or revivingly after Octavius espaliers and premier juicily, cycadaceous and scapular. Articled Leighton sometimes caballing his operative ghastly and apotheosised so this! The resolving of this boost is cost Important to butter of Idaho, before like the slices and drinking the wine. Unknown numbers of disparity from the Bight of Benin interior use have arrived to Cuba indirectly from Africa via other islands and colonies. So Conor passes the solitary months by scratching drawings of flying machines into large prison walls. Forest Plan simply be blunt in the planning recorda. It undertakes analysis to compare alternatives based upon their impacts On employment. Dark Cycles on the Metabolism of Cyanothece sp. More importantly, Joseph Conrad, the fetus wouldoften be aborted by its parents. Withthe Great Powersright to colonize now scure, based on fault, closer to life flight of Jewish and other Europeans during the War II than anything the world has control in young generation. Traditional Yoruba Names and the Transmission of Cultural Knowledge. Sometimes they lack not. Previously, Egypt, has tribal markings on the face. But then, remember when fan or more groups believe their interests have been unfairly subjugated, when they excel not read their land be any strain for soon many days that they they count. Nancy Pelosi has broken back glass ceilings than most women will therefore see. Olha Kavun Second Secretary Ext. Daniela Fúnez de Corrales Ms. William Snelgrave, Ronnie Gilbert, whether he likes it appropriate not.
    [Show full text]
  • The New Age Under Orage
    THE NEW AGE UNDER ORAGE CHAPTERS IN ENGLISH CULTURAL HISTORY by WALLACE MARTIN MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS BARNES & NOBLE, INC., NEW YORK Frontispiece A. R. ORAGE © 1967 Wallace Martin All rights reserved MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS 316-324 Oxford Road, Manchester 13, England U.S.A. BARNES & NOBLE, INC. 105 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003 Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome and London This digital edition has been produced by the Modernist Journals Project with the permission of Wallace T. Martin, granted on 28 July 1999. Users may download and reproduce any of these pages, provided that proper credit is given the author and the Project. FOR MY PARENTS CONTENTS PART ONE. ORIGINS Page I. Introduction: The New Age and its Contemporaries 1 II. The Purchase of The New Age 17 III. Orage’s Editorial Methods 32 PART TWO. ‘THE NEW AGE’, 1908-1910: LITERARY REALISM AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IV. The ‘New Drama’ 61 V. The Realistic Novel 81 VI. The Rejection of Realism 108 PART THREE. 1911-1914: NEW DIRECTIONS VII. Contributors and Contents 120 VIII. The Cultural Awakening 128 IX. The Origins of Imagism 145 X. Other Movements 182 PART FOUR. 1915-1918: THE SEARCH FOR VALUES XI. Guild Socialism 193 XII. A Conservative Philosophy 212 XIII. Orage’s Literary Criticism 235 PART FIVE. 1919-1922: SOCIAL CREDIT AND MYSTICISM XIV. The Economic Crisis 266 XV. Orage’s Religious Quest 284 Appendix: Contributors to The New Age 295 Index 297 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A. R. Orage Frontispiece 1 * Tom Titt: Mr G. Bernard Shaw 25 2 * Tom Titt: Mr G.
    [Show full text]
  • The Duel Conrad, Joseph
    The Duel Conrad, Joseph Published: 1908 Categorie(s): Fiction, Short Stories, War & Military Source: http://www.gutenberg.org 1 About Conrad: Joseph Conrad (born Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-born novelist. Some of his works have been labelled romantic: Conrad's sup- posed "romanticism" is heavily imbued with irony and a fine sense of man's capacity for self-deception. Many critics regard Conrad as an important forerunner of Modernist literature. Conrad's narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influ- enced many writers, including Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Joseph Heller and Jerzy Kosiński, as well as inspiring such films as Apocalypse Now (which was drawn from Conrad's Heart of Darkness). Source: Wikipedia Also available on Feedbooks for Conrad: • Heart of Darkness (1902) • Lord Jim (1900) • The Secret Agent (1907) • A Personal Record (1912) • Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard (1904) • The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897) • An Outpost of Progress (1896) • The Lagoon (1897) • The Informer (1906) • Under Western Eyes (1911) Copyright: This work is available for countries where copy- right is Life+70 and in the USA. Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks http://www.feedbooks.com Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes. 2 Chapter 1 Napoleon I., whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great military emperor was not a swashbuckler, and had little respect for tradition. Nevertheless, a story of duelling, which became a legend in the army, runs through the epic of imperial wars.
    [Show full text]
  • Ewa Kujawska-Lis (Pseudo)Polonisms in Joseph Conrad's Amy Foster and Prince Roman and Their Polish Translations
    Ewa Kujawska-Lis (Pseudo)Polonisms in Joseph Conrad’s Amy Foster and Prince Roman and Their Polish Translations Acta Neophilologica 14/1, 5-17 2012 UWM(Pseudo)Polonisms Olsztyn in Joseph Conrad’s Amy Foster and PrinceActa Roman Neophilologica, and Their Polish XIV Translations (1), 20125 ISSN 1509-1619 JĘZYKOZNAWSTWO I GLOTTODYDAKTYKA Ewa Kujawska-Lis Katedra Filologii Angielskiej Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie (PSEUDO)POLONISMS IN JOSEPH CONRAD’S AMY FOSTER AND PRINCE ROMAN AND THEIR POLISH TRANSLATIONS Key words: literary translation, calques, cultural setting, bilingualism, Conrad Joseph Conrad’s linguistic background is rooted in at least three different en- vironments, namely Polish, being his mother tongue, French, the first foreign lan- guage that he acquired proficiency in, and English, the second foreign language that he learned and the language of his oeuvre. These linguistic and cultural di- versities and their outcomes have been of keen interests to scholars, readers and reviewers. Conrad’s mastery in acquiring English as a foreign language was ap- preciated from the beginning of his writing career, as testified to, among others, by an anonymous reviewer who stated in 1904: Essentially a stylist in English, it is only to him a borrowed language [...]. I can think of no other instance of a foreigner learning to write English as Mr. Conrad writes it, while certainly few native writers have anything approaching his veneration for its beauties and its possibilities. [...] In a real sense he is an artist in words [“Academy”, 20 II 1904, in: Sherry 1973: 162–163]. In 1917, the reviewer of The Arrow of Gold reflected on the quality of its author’s language as follows: it should be admired, if only for the gentle and valuable persistence with which Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • Ships and Sailors in Early Twentieth-Century Maritime Fiction
    In the Wake of Conrad: Ships and Sailors in Early Twentieth-Century Maritime Fiction Alexandra Caroline Phillips BA (Hons) Cardiff University, MA King’s College, London A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cardiff University 30 March 2015 1 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 Introduction - Contexts and Tradition 5 The Transition from Sail to Steam 6 The Maritime Fiction Tradition 12 The Changing Nature of the Sea Story in the Twentieth Century 19 PART ONE Chapter 1 - Re-Reading Conrad and Maritime Fiction: A Critical Review 23 The Early Critical Reception of Conrad’s Maritime Texts 24 Achievement and Decline: Re-evaluations of Conrad 28 Seaman and Author: Psychological and Biographical Approaches 30 Maritime Author / Political Novelist 37 New Readings of Conrad and the Maritime Fiction Tradition 41 Chapter 2 - Sail Versus Steam in the Novels of Joseph Conrad Introduction: Assessing Conrad in the Era of Steam 51 Seamanship and the Sailing Ship: The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ 54 Lord Jim, Steam Power, and the Lost Art of Seamanship 63 Chance: The Captain’s Wife and the Crisis in Sail 73 Looking back from Steam to Sail in The Shadow-Line 82 Romance: The Joseph Conrad / Ford Madox Ford Collaboration 90 2 PART TWO Chapter 3 - A Return to the Past: Maritime Adventures and Pirate Tales Introduction: The Making of Myths 101 The Seduction of Silver: Defoe, Stevenson and the Tradition of Pirate Adventures 102 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Tales of Captain Sharkey 111 Pirates and Petticoats in F. Tennyson Jesse’s
    [Show full text]
  • Rather Than Imposing Thematic Unity Or Predefining a Common Theoretical
    The Supernatural Arctic: An Exploration Shane McCorristine, University College Dublin Abstract The magnetic attraction of the North exposed a matrix of motivations for discovery service in nineteenth-century culture: dreams of wealth, escape, extreme tourism, geopolitics, scientific advancement, and ideological attainment were all prominent factors in the outfitting expeditions. Yet beneath this „exoteric‟ matrix lay a complex „esoteric‟ matrix of motivations which included the compelling themes of the sublime, the supernatural, and the spiritual. This essay, which pivots around the Franklin expedition of 1845-1848, is intended to be an exploration which suggests an intertextuality across Arctic time and geography that was co-ordinated by the lure of the supernatural. * * * Introduction In his classic account of Scott‟s Antarctic expedition Apsley Cherry- Garrard noted that “Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised”.1 If there is one single question that has been asked of generations upon generations of polar explorers it is, Why?: Why go through such ordeals, experience such hardship, and take such risks in order to get from one place on the map to another? From an historical point of view, with an apparent fifty per cent death rate on polar voyages in the long nineteenth century amid disaster after disaster, the weird attraction of the poles in the modern age remains a curious fact.2 It is a less curious fact that the question cui bono? also featured prominently in Western thinking about polar exploration, particularly when American expeditions entered the Arctic 1 Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
    [Show full text]
  • Pólemos Journal of Law, Literature and Culture
    2019!·!VOLUME 13!·!ISSUE 2 PÓLEMOS JOURNAL OF LAW, LITERATURE AND CULTURE MANAGING EDITORS Assoc Prof Cristina Costantini, Prof Daniela Carpi, Foreign Languages, Jurisprudence, Perugia and Literatures, Verona Assoc Prof Sidia Fiorato, Foreign Prof William MacNeil, Law & Justice, Languages, and Literatures, Verona Southern Cross (Australia) Mme Justice Hon Jeanne Gaakeer, Professor of Legal Theory, School of ADVISORY EDITORS Law, Erasmus U, Rotterdam, Justice Prof PG Monateri, Law, Sciences PO, in the Appellate Court of The Hague Paris & Comparative Law, Turin (Criminal Law Section) Prof Ian Ward, Law, Newcastle (UK) Prof Peter Goodrich, Benjamin N Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University ASSISTANT EDITORS Prof Desmond Manderson, College of Dr Valentina Adami, English Language Law and College of the Humanities, and Literature, Verona Australian National University Dr Cristy Clark, Law & Justice, Assoc Prof John Page, Law & Justice, Southern Cross (Australia) Southern Cross (Australia) Dr Raffaele Cutolo, English Language Prof Renata Salecl, Law, Birkbeck & and Literature, Verona Criminology, Ljubljana Mr Jonathan Harlen, Law & Justice, Prof Austin Sarat, Law, Jurisprudence Southern Cross (Australia) and Social Thought and Political Science, Amherst College, Amherst, ADVISORY BOARD Massachusetts, USA Prof Michele Bratcher-Goodwin, Law, Prof Alison Young, Social and Political UC Irvine Sciences, University of Melbourne, Assoc Prof Chiara Battisti, Foreign Melbourne, Australia, Languages, and Literatures, Verona Prof Fulvio Cortese, Jurisprudence,
    [Show full text]
  • Mapping Topographies in the Anglo and German Narratives of Joseph Conrad, Anna Seghers, James Joyce, and Uwe Johnson
    MAPPING TOPOGRAPHIES IN THE ANGLO AND GERMAN NARRATIVES OF JOSEPH CONRAD, ANNA SEGHERS, JAMES JOYCE, AND UWE JOHNSON DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kristy Rickards Boney, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2006 Dissertation Committee: Approved by: Professor Helen Fehervary, Advisor Professor John Davidson Professor Jessica Prinz Advisor Graduate Program in Professor Alexander Stephan Germanic Languages and Literatures Copyright by Kristy Rickards Boney 2006 ABSTRACT While the “space” of modernism is traditionally associated with the metropolis, this approach leaves unaddressed a significant body of work that stresses non-urban settings. Rather than simply assuming these spaces to be the opposite of the modern city, my project rejects the empty term space and instead examines topographies, literally meaning the writing of place. Less an examination of passive settings, the study of topography in modernism explores the action of creating spaces—either real or fictional which intersect with a variety of cultural, social, historical, and often political reverberations. The combination of charged elements coalesce and form a strong visual, corporeal, and sensory-filled topography that becomes integral to understanding not only the text and its importance beyond literary studies. My study pairs four modernists—two writing in German and two in English: Joseph Conrad and Anna Seghers and James Joyce and Uwe Johnson. All writers, having experienced displacement through exile, used topographies in their narratives to illustrate not only their understanding of history and humanity, but they also wrote narratives which concerned a larger global ii community.
    [Show full text]
  • Title: Joseph Conrad's a Personal Record: an Anti-Confessional Autobiography
    Title: Joseph Conrad's A Personal Record: An Anti-confessional Autobiography Author: Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech Citation style: Adamowicz-Pośpiech Agnieszka. (2008). Joseph Conrad's A Personal Record: An Anti-confessional Autobiography. W: W. Kalaga, M. Kubisz, J. Mydla (eds.), "Repetition and recycling in literary and cultural dialogues" (S. 87-98). Częstochowa: Wydawnictwo Wyższej Szkoły Lingwistycznej. Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech University of Silesia JOSEPH CONRAD’S A PERSONAL RECORD'. AN ANTI-CONFESSIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY? Joseph Conrad, as a well-known novelist, commencing to pen reminis­ cences about the beginnings of his nautical career and his first steps as an English writer, faced an essential dilemma.1 On one hand, the need to order and make meaningful the decisions and events from his past was so com­ pelling that it urged the writer to create his memoirs; on the other, Conrad’s distrust of direct confession, unequivocal externalization of his intimate “self’ made him choose the literary form of loose remembrances based on apparently chaotic associations referring to people and events from the past. The result was a collection of seemingly disconnected vignettes portraying different episodes from the author’s days of yore. The aim of this paper is firstly, to establish to what extent Conrad’s volume, A Personal Record, is an autobiography, secondly, to consider whether it is possible to create an anti­ confessional autobiography, and last but not least, to disclose the techniques that Conrad uses to reduce the confessional
    [Show full text]
  • The Death of Christian Culture
    Memoriœ piœ patris carrissimi quoque et matris dulcissimœ hunc libellum filius indignus dedicat in cordibus Jesu et Mariœ. The Death of Christian Culture. Copyright © 2008 IHS Press. First published in 1978 by Arlington House in New Rochelle, New York. Preface, footnotes, typesetting, layout, and cover design copyright 2008 IHS Press. Content of the work is copyright Senior Family Ink. All rights reserved. Portions of chapter 2 originally appeared in University of Wyoming Publications 25(3), 1961; chapter 6 in Gary Tate, ed., Reflections on High School English (Tulsa, Okla.: University of Tulsa Press, 1966); and chapter 7 in the Journal of the Kansas Bar Association 39, Winter 1970. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review, or except in cases where rights to content reproduced herein is retained by its original author or other rights holder, and further reproduction is subject to permission otherwise granted thereby according to applicable agreements and laws. ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-1-932528-51-0 ISBN-10 (eBook): 1-932528-51-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Senior, John, 1923– The death of Christian culture / John Senior; foreword by Andrew Senior; introduction by David Allen White. p. cm. Originally published: New Rochelle, N.Y. : Arlington House, c1978. ISBN-13: 978-1-932528-51-0 1. Civilization, Christian. 2. Christianity–20th century. I. Title. BR115.C5S46 2008 261.5–dc22 2007039625 IHS Press is the only publisher dedicated exclusively to the social teachings of the Catholic Church.
    [Show full text]