1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910809503703321

Autore

Watt Ian <1917-1999, >

Titolo

Essays on Conrad / / Ian Watt [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2000

ISBN

1-107-11994-4

0-511-01374-4

1-280-15906-5

0-511-11854-6

0-511-15590-5

0-511-32533-9

0-511-48534-4

0-511-04999-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xii, 214 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

823/.912

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Foreword: Frank Kermode -- Joseph Conrad: alienation and commitment -- Almayer's Folly: introduction -- Conrad criticism and The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' -- Conrad's Heart of Darkness and the critics -- Comedy and humour in Typhoon -- Political and social background of The Secret Agent -- The Secret Sharer: introduction -- Conrad, James and Chance -- Story and idea in The Shadow-Line -- The decline of the decline: notes on Conrad's reputation -- Around Conrad's grave -- 'The Bridge over the River Kwai' as myth.

Sommario/riassunto

Ian Watt (1917-99) has long been acknowledged as one of the finest of post-War literary critics. The Rise of the Novel (1957) is still the landmark account of the way in which realist fiction developed in the eighteenth century and Watt's work on Conrad has been enormously influential. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century (1979) was to have been followed by a volume addressing Conrad's later work, but the material for this long-awaited second volume remains in essay form. It is these essays, as Frank Kermode points out in his foreword, which form the



nucleus of Essays on Conrad. Watt's own worldview, as well as his insight into Conrad's work, was shaped by his experiences as a prisoner of war on the River Kwai. His personal, and painfully moving, account of these experiences forms part of his famous essay 'The Bridge over the River Kwai as Myth' which completes this essential collection.