Joseph Conrad and the Adventure Tradition [Hardcover]

A study of Conrad's fiction in relation to earlier travel and adventure writing on the British empire.Dr White contrasts Conrad's fiction with earlier writing (travel accounts and adventure stories) on the subject of empire, showing how the very complexity of Conrad's work provided an alternative, and more critical, means of evaluating the experience of empire.Dr White contrasts Conrad's fiction with earlier writing (travel accounts and adventure stories) on the subject of empire, showing how the very complexity of Conrad's work provided an alternative, and more critical, means of evaluating the experience of empire.Nineteenth-century adventure fiction relating to the British empire served to promote, celebrate, and justify the imperial project, asserting the essential and privileging difference between us and them, colonizer and colonized. Andrea White's study examines popular travel literature in relation to later adventure stories, and sets the fiction of Joseph Conrad in this context, showing how Conrad demythologized the imperial subject constructed in earlier writing. She argues that the very complexity of Conrad's work provided an alternative, more critical means of evaluating the experience of empire.Introduction; 1. Constructing the imperial subject: nineteenth-century travel writing; 2. Adventure fiction: a special case; 3. Them and us: a useful and appealing fiction; 4. The shift toward subversion: the case of Rider Haggard; 5. Travel writing and adventure fiction as shaping discourses for Conrad; 6. Almayer's Folly; 7. An Outcast of the Islands; 8. The African fictions: (I) - An Outpost of Progress; 9. The African fictions: (II) - Heart of Darkness. ...a useful contribution to the field. Jil Larson, Victorian Studies All in all, White's study is clearly written, modestly argued, and genuinely helpful in giving substance to generalizations often made about Conrad's fiction. David Leon Higon, English Literature in Transition