Skip to main content
Palgrave Macmillan

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad's Novels

  • Book
  • © 2008

Overview

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (7 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad s Novels sets out to revolutionize our reading of Joseph Conrad s works and challenge the critical heritage that accompanies them. Levin identifies the emergence of an aesthetic principle in Conrad s novels and theorizes that principle through the concept of the otherwise present, which Levin defines as that which provokes desire and perpetuates it by barring its appeasement. This book offers a detailed analysis of Lord Jim, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes, The Arrow of Gold and Suspense, alongside a poststructuralist-inspired explication of Conrad s literary vision and its defining principle. This study is an important source for both the newcomers and the initiated to Conrad s oeuvre.

Reviews

"This original, well-written, and carefully thought-out volume offers a valuable and original contribution as well as a worthy challenge to Conrad studies." - The Conradian

"Levin s concept of the otherwise present -the continued and continual oscillation between absence and presence-proves to be immensely productive for the reader of Joseph Conrad s fiction. Her book gripped me from first to last page: it is engagingly but compellingly written, and chock-full of striking, surprising, and ultimately convincing insights into Conrad s texts. Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad s Novels is an outstanding book that should be read by every serious student of Conrad." - Jeremy Hawthorn, Norwegian University of Science and Technology and author of Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad

"This is one of the most suggestive and genuinely innovative works of Conrad criticism for some time. Levin develops her concept of the otherwise present through close readings of a range of Conrad s works from Lord Jim to neglected later works such as Suspense. Through attention to the thematics of spectrality - to guilt, shame, desire, hope and their otherwise present projections - and an engagement with some of Conrad s characteristic methods of story-telling, Levin demonstrates the flexibility and the rich hermeneutic and narratological possibilities of the concept both within and beyond Conrad studies. See otherwise, see better. " - Robert Hampson, Head of the Department of English, Royal Holloway, University of London

About the author


YAEL LEVIN is Lecturer, Department of English, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us