Joseph Conrad: Beyond Culture and Background

This is an unusual and important study of the fiction of Joseph Conrad. Professor Goonetilleke's English university education, enabling him to move at ease among the materials of English literary history and criticism, coupled with his own basis in Asian conditions, prompts an effectively fresh response to Conrad's fiction, opening new perspectives for readers. His approach is comprehensive: he sees the fiction as art in the context of relevant historical, political and biographical facts, while being inspired, in the first place, by a literary-critical sense. He compares and contrasts Conrad with minor and major writers, thereby highlighting the distinctive nature of his approach. In this study of Conrad, there are concerns which become central: how does each of his milieux shape the kind of fiction written about it; in what ways can one account for the differences in his presentations of diverse worlds; what positions do his artistic visions occupy in the context of his period; how do Conrad's presentation of multiple levels of perception, the equipoise between irony and moral passion, his shifts from rhetoric to detachment, reveal the complexity of a mind both within and beyond its environment; what problems of art has he faced in trying to present his vision of things and how has he tried to solve them; in what respects does he matter to us? While being learned and informed, this study is written in a clear, readable manner which will captivate the scholar, the student and the general reader alike. It is meant to be a contribution to knowledge and, at the same time, it serves as a critical introduction to Conrad's fiction.