Postcolonial Conrad

Terry Collits

"Across the twentieth century Joseph Conrad's colonial novels were read from radically different perspectives and interpreted through a wide range of discourses. By the century's end these fictions, which record the encounters between Europe and Europe's 'Other' at the moment of high imperialism, had become key texts in the burgeoning field of postcolonial studies. In this study Terry Collits tackles what is now a central question in both postcolonial studies and Conrad scholarship: what happens when Conrad's novels are read from the perspective of the colonized?" "Drawing on many years of research and a rich body of critical approaches, including psychoanalysis, feminism and discourse analysis, Postcolonial Conrad not only offers fresh readings of Conrad's novels of imperialism but also maps and analyses the interpretative tradition they have generated. Terry Collits begins by examining the reception of Conrad's work in terms of the history of ideas, traditional literary criticism, concepts of 'Englishness', Marxism and postcolonialism. The novels he then selects for detailed re-evaluation are Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo and Victory." "Collits' volume re-examines a century of literary history, analysing the ways in which changing political, pedagogical and theoretical conditions have generated an interpretative tradition of extraordinary density. Postcolonial Conrad concludes by identifying lines of political criticism that are emerging in the twenty-first century and thus asks anew in what terms we might understand these powerful and intriguing novels."--Jacket.