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major writers, biographical notes, and literary criticism

major writers, biographical notes, and literary criticism

James Joyce – life and works

September 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

James Joyce - portrait1882. James Joyce was born in Dublin, the eldest of ten children. His father was a rather improvident tax collector. The family became progressively impoverished.

1888. He was educated in Jesuit schools, with emphasis on Catholic and scholastic doctrine. [These establishments were also renowned for their intellectual rigour.] Joyce was a talented student, especially good at languages. He moved from being devout to bitterly anti-Catholic. These experiences were later used as material for his autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

1893. Enters Belvedere College, a Jesuit boys’ day school – fees having been waived because of family’s needy circumstances.

1894. Joyce reads Lamb’s Adventures of Ulysses and writes theme on Ulysses as ‘my favourite hero’.

1897. Wins prize for best English composition in Ireland for his age group.

1898. Studies languages at University College, Dublin. Rebels against Church, Family, and the State. Begins to read Ibsen. Active campaigner for freedom of expression and equality for women.

1902 Leaves university to study medicine in Paris, but gives it up and writes reviews for newspapers.

1904. Back in Dublin following his mother’s death, Joyce meets Nora Barnacle on June 10, subsequently to be known as ‘Bloomsday’ and used as temporal setting for Ulysses. Opposed to marriage, but unable to live together because of moral climate at that time, they move to Trieste and live there for the next ten years. Joyce earns a precarious living teaching English at the Berlitz School of Languages.

1905. Joyce writing stories which are later collected as Dubliners, and Stephen Hero, a novel based on his own early life. Supported by his brother Stanislaus.


James Joyce - biography James Joyce is an acclaimed biography, considered by many to be the definitive account of Joyce’s life and work. Richard Ellmann has a sympathetic grasp of Joyce’s personality. A reverence for his literary accomplishment is balanced by a bemused affection for his weaknesses. Whether Joyce is putting the finishing touches to Ulysses, falling down drunk in the streets of Trieste, or writing erotic messages to his future wife, Ellmann’s account always shows us a genius and a human being. This latest edition has been revised and expanded to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, and previously unknown letters.


1907. Publishes Chamber Music (poems). Financial hardship partly self-induced as a result of erratic and improvident lifestyle. Eyesight problems begin.

1908. Begins revising Stephen Hero. Many unsuccessful attempts to have Dubliners published.

1909. Returns to Dublin and opens the city’s first cinema – the ‘Volta’.

1912. Lectures on Defoe and Blake at Trieste University. Passes Italian state exams to become a teacher. Lectures on Hamlet.

1913. Writes Giacomo Joyce, a novella based on unconsummated affair with one of his language students. Corresponds with American poet Ezra Pound, who begins serialization of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in his magazine the Egoist.

1914. Joyce’s annus mirablis. Publication of Dubliners. Begins writing Ulysses.

1915. Completes Exiles, a play. Family moves to neutral Switzerland during first world war. Zurich important centre for arts, theatre, and political exiles. Awarded a grant (£75) from Royal Literary Fund.

1917. American and English editions of Portrait well received. Further eye operations. Harriet Shaw Weaver begins her financial support which lasts throughout the rest of Joyce’s life: (she even pays for his funeral).

1918. Serialization of Ulysses begins in the American magazine Little Review. Reputation grows. Forms a theatrical group, the English Players, and stages The Importance of Being Earnest.

1919. Copies of Little Review confiscated and burned by US Postal Authorities. Family returns to Trieste.

1920. Family moves to live in Paris for next twenty years. Friendships with Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and T.S.Eliot. Supported by American bookshop owner Sylvia Beech.

1921. Little Review prosecuted by the Society for the Suppression of Vice for publishing extracts from Ulysses. Sylvia Beech offers to publish under the imprint of her bookshop, Shakespeare and Company.

1922. Ulysses printed in Dijon and published on Joyce’s fortieth birthday. Nora refuses to read it.

1923. Writes the first pages of Finnegans Wake. More eye operations fail to save failing sight. Ulysses pirated in America and copies seized by customs in England.

1927. Fragments of the Wake published in small magazines, but work is constantly revised and re-written.

1930. Publication of Stuart Gilbert’s critical study James Joyce’s Ulysses, written with Joyce’s assistance.

1931. Travels to London with Nora to be married ‘for testamentary reasons’ following the death of his father. Daughter Lucia goes mad after falling in love with Samuel Beckett, who was then acting as Joyce’s secretary.

1934. First publication in USA of Ulysses by Random House. Travels to Switzerland to be near Lucia who was in a mental institution. Almost blind, Joyces writes in coloured crayons.

1935. Continues work on Finnegans Wake. (Nora describes it as – “that chop suey he’s writing”).

1936. First publication in UK of Ulysses by Bodley Head.

1939. Finnegans Wake published in London and New York in the year of Joyce’s fifty-seventh birthday.

1941. Following the occupation of France, Joyces move back to neutral Switzerland. Joyce dies after an abdominal operation. (Joyce’s dates 1882-1941 identical to those of Virginia Woolf.)

© Roy Johnson 2004


The Cambridge Companion to James JoyceThe Cambridge Companion to James Joyce contains eleven essays by an international team of leading Joyce scholars. The topics covered include his debt to Irish and European writers and traditions, his life in Paris, and the relation of his work to the ‘modern’ spirit of sceptical relativism. One essay describes Joyce’s developing achievement in his earlier works (Stephen Hero, Dubliners, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), while another tackles his best-known text, asking the basic question ‘What is Ulysses about, and how can it be read?’ The issue of ‘difficulty’ raised by Finnegans Wake is directly addressed, and the reader is taken through questions of theme, language, structure and meaning, as well as the book’s composition and the history of Wake criticism.


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Filed Under: James Joyce Tagged With: Biography, James Joyce, Literary studies, Modernism

James Joyce A Critical Guide

August 9, 2009 by Roy Johnson

biography, explication, criticism

It is interesting to note that almost all of the great writers of the modernist movement published their seminal texts within a few years of each other: D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love in 1920, James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway in 1925, and Franz Kafka’s The Trial in the same year. James Joyce A Critical Guide, an introduction to the writer and his work, is split into three sections. The first deals with Joyce’s life and the context in which his works were produced.

James Joyce A Critical GuideThe second is an examination of his major publications, treated in the order that they were written. And the third is an account of the critical responses that his work has evoked over the years. Now that James Joyce is established as part of the canon of modernist literature, it’s easy to forget the public difficulties and personal sacrifices he made in order that his version of art be given a fair hearing. As Lee Spinks observes:

His systematic transformation of the nature and scope of the novel and his protracted struggle against the legal censorship and suppression of his work extended the possibilities of modern art and helped to redraw the boundaries between the claims of public morality and the rights of artistic expression for his own and succeeding generations.

Part One is a very enjoyable account of Joyce’s life and his artistic development, with occasional excursions into Irish politics and history. Joyce’s personal existence was restless, peripatetic, and pan-European, yet in his work he wrote about the same thing all his life – Ireland, the country to which he never returned.

In Part Two Spinks offers a critical account of each of Joyce’s major works. This includes their genesis, their themes, and in particular the development of his literary style. This represents an almost continuous line of increasing complexity from 1905 to 1939 with the publication of Finnegans Wake. This is the largest section of the book, and each of its parts is supplemented by suggestions for further reading.

I was glad to note that there was a full account of the very tangled and much-debated status of the text of Ulysses. This was supposed to be settled conclusively with the publication of Hans Walter Gabler’s ‘corrected edition’ of 1986, but despite his supposed rigorous editorial method, it seems to have made matters even worse. Spinks opts to recommend Jeri Johnson’s critical edition of Ulysses (1988) published by Oxford University Press.

Part Three deals with the critical reception of Joyce’s work. Spinks points to the fact that right from the beginning as Joyce’s work began to appear in various little magazines, it tended to divide opinion quite markedly. Many critics at first objected to his frankness and consideration of topics (sex, religion) which we now regard as quite harmless. Others admired the freshness and originality of his style. It was the publication of Ulysses which really galvanized both these tendencies, and we are reminded that the novel was –

a work that was reviled, celebrated, legally examined, banned, pirated and reinterpreted as a modernist ‘classic’ within twenty years of its publication

He splits his observations into two parts – criticism before and after Joyce’s death. The first of these periods sees relatively traditional commentators grappling with the highpoint of literary experimentation and modernism. The second includes all the recently fashionable schools of structuralism, post-modernism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminism. You’ll need a strong intellectual stomach to cope with some of these critics, many of whom seem more interested in making life difficult rather than throwing instructive light onto somebody else’s work.

Finnegans Wake remains a challenge to them all, for like the other major figures of early literary modernism, Joyce was drawn to push the nature of the novel to almost unreadable limits – just as Woolf did with The Waves, Thomas Mann with Joseph and his Brothers, and Herman Broch did with The Death of Virgil.

But despite the difficulties of his later work, Joyce is an approachable and very amusing writer – which is rare amongst the modernists. Anyone seeking assistance with the deeper aspects of his work would do well to consult a guide such as this. It offers clear and readable pathways through the thickets of both the work and commentary upon it.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2009


Lee Spinks, James Joyce: A Critical Guide, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009, pp.233, ISBN: 0748638369


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Filed Under: James Joyce Tagged With: Biography, James Joyce, Literary criticism, Literary studies

James Joyce criticism

September 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a bibliography of criticism and commentary

James Joyce criticism - small portraitHarry Blamires, The New Bloomsday Book, London: Routledge, 1996.

Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, Oxford University Press, 1972.

Anthony Burgess, Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce, Andre Deutsch, 1973.

Robert H. Deming (ed), James Joyce: The Critical Heritage, 2 Vols, Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1970.

Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, Oxford University Press, 1959.

Richard Ellman and Stuart Gilbert (eds), The Letters of James Joyce, 3 Vols, Faber, 1957-66.

Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce’s Ulysses: a Study, Faber and Faber, 1930.

Seon Givens, James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism, N.Y.: Vanguard Press, 1963.

S.C. Goldberg, The Classical Temper, Oxford University Press, 1961.

Suzette A. Henke, James Joyce and the Politics of Desire, Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1990.

Hugh Kenner, Joyce’s Voices, Faber, 1978.

Harry Levin, James Joyce: a Critical Introduction, New York: New Directions, 1960.

Colin MacCabe (ed), James Joyce: New Perspectives, Harvester, 1982.

W.J. McCormack and Alistair Stead (eds), James Joyce and Modern Literature, Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1982.

Patrick Parrinder, James Joyce, Cambridge University Press, 1984.

C.H. Peake, James Joyce: The Citizen and the Artist, Arnold, 1977.

Jean-Michel Rabaté, Joyce Upon the Void, Macmillan, 1991.

Lee Spinks, James Joyce, Edinburgh University Press, 2008.

W.Y. Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce, Thames and Hudson, 1959.


The Cambridge Companion to James JoyceThe Cambridge Companion to James Joyce contains eleven essays by an international team of leading Joyce scholars. The topics covered include his debt to Irish and European writers and traditions, his life in Paris, and the relation of his work to the ‘modern’ spirit of sceptical relativism. One essay describes Joyce’s developing achievement in his earlier works (Stephen Hero, Dubliners, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). Another tackles his best-known text, asking the basic question ‘What is Ulysses about, and how can it be read?’ The issue of ‘difficulty’ raised by Finnegans Wake is directly addressed, and the reader is taken through questions of theme, language, structure and meaning, as well as the book’s composition and the history of Wake criticism.
The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce Buy the book here


James Joyce – web links

James Joyce web links James Joyce at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

James Joyce web links James Joyce at Project Gutenberg
A limited collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

James Joyce web links James Joyce at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of the major works, religion, music, list of biographies, and external web links.

James Joyce on film James Joyce at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plus box office, technical credits, and quizzes.

James Joyce exhibition James Joyce Centre in Dublin
Exhibition centre, walking tours, lectures, and newsletter. The latest addition is a graphic novel version of ‘Ulysses’.

James Joyce web links The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection
University of Wisconsin – digitised scans of Finnegans Wake and out-of-print studies on Joyce’s language, plus rare critical studies.

James Joyce web links An Annotated Ulysses
An online version of Ulysses with hyperlinks giving explanations of obscure and classical references in the text.

James Joyce web links Cornell’s James Joyce Collection
Cornell University – a collection of letters, manuscripts, and books documenting the life and work of James Joyce on exhibition in 2005. Particularly strong on Joyce’s early life.

© Roy Johnson 2004


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Filed Under: James Joyce Tagged With: James Joyce, Literary studies, Modernism

James Joyce greatest works

September 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

an introduction to the major stories and novels

If you read Joyce’s work in the same order that he wrote it, the sequence forms a perfect James Joyce tutorial. His early writing is simple and easy to understand, then it gradually becomes more complex as he experimented with the possibilities of language. Be prepared to extend the range of your vocabulary, to discover prose blended with poetry, and to encounter amazingly inventive word-play in the later work. Joyce’s writing was also considered quite scandalous when it first appeared, because it is critical of religion and frank about sexual matters.

DublinersDubliners is his first major work – a ground-breaking collection of short stories in which he strips away all the decorations and flourishes of late Victorian prose style. What remains is a sparse yet lyrical exposure of small moments of revelation – which he called ‘epiphanies’. Like other modernists, such as Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf, Joyce minimised the dramatic element of the short story in favour of symbolic meaning and a more static aesthetic. This collection of vignettes features both real and imaginary figures in Dublin life around the turn of the century. The collection ends with the most famous of all Joyce’s stories – ‘The Dead’. It caused controversy when it first appeared, and was the first of many of Joyce’s works to be banned in his native country. Dubliners is now widely regarded as a seminal collection of modern short stories. New readers should start here.
James Joyce greatest works Dubliners Buy the book at Amazon UK
James Joyce greatest works Dubliners Buy the book at Amazon US

 

James Joyce greatest works A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce’s first complete novel – a largely autobiographical account of a young man’s struggle with Catholicism and his desire to forge himself as an artist. It features a prose style whose complexity develops in parallel with the growth of the hero, Stephen Dedalus. The early pages are written from a child’s point of view, but then they quickly become more sophisticated. As Stephen struggles with religious belief and the growth of his sexual feelings as a young adult, the prose become more complex and philosophical. In addition to the account of his personal life and a critique of Irish society at the beginning of the last century, it also incorporates the creation of an aesthetic philosophy which was unmistakably that of Joyce himself. The novel ends with Stephen quitting Ireland for good, just as Joyce himself was to do – never to return.
James Joyce greatest works A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Buy the book at Amazon UK
James Joyce greatest works A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Buy the book at Amazon US

 

James Joyce greatest works UlyssesUlysses (1922) is one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and it is certainly Joyce’s most celebrated work. He takes Homer’s Odyssey as a structural framework and uses it as the base to create a complex story of characters moving around Dublin on a single day in June 1904. Each separate chapter is written in a different prose style to reflect its theme or subject. The novel also includes two forms of the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique. This was Joyce’s attempt to reproduce the apparently random way in which our perceptions of the world are mixed with our conscious ideas and memories in an unstoppable flow of thought. There is a famous last chapter which is an eighty page unpunctuated soliloquy of a woman as she lies in bed at night, mulling over the events of her life and episodes from the previous day.
James Joyce greatest works Ulysses Buy the book at Amazon UK
James Joyce greatest works Ulysses Buy the book at Amazon US

 

James Joyce greatest works Finnegans WakeFinnegans Wake is famous in literary circles as a great novel which almost no one has ever read. Joyce said that he spent seventeen years of his life writing Finnegans Wake and that he expected readers to spend the rest of their lives trying to understand it. It continues where Ulysses leaves off in terms of linguistic complexity. Written and rewritten many times over, Joyce eventually decided to incorporate many languages other than English into the narrative. It is a fantastic crossword-puzzle of puns, parodies, jokes and linguistic invention which make enormous intellectual demands on the reader. This, in addition to the many arcane references and a very complex narrative make Finnegans Wake a literary experiment which has never been surpassed. It is one of the great unread masterpieces of twentieth century literature.
James Joyce greatest works Finnegans Wake Buy the book at Amazon UK
James Joyce greatest works Finnegans Wake Buy the book at Amazon US

 


The Cambridge Companion to James JoyceThe Cambridge Companion to James Joyce contains eleven essays by an international team of leading Joyce scholars. The topics covered include his debt to Irish and European writers and traditions, his life in Paris, and the relation of his work to the ‘modern’ spirit of sceptical relativism. One essay describes Joyce’s developing achievement in his earlier works (Stephen Hero, Dubliners, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). Another tackles his best-known text, asking the basic question ‘What is Ulysses about, and how can it be read?’ The issue of ‘difficulty’ raised by Finnegans Wake is directly addressed, and the reader is taken through questions of theme, language, structure and meaning, as well as the book’s composition and the history of Wake criticism.
The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce Buy the book at Amazon UK
The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce Buy the book at Amazon US


James Joyce – web links

James Joyce web links James Joyce at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

James Joyce web links James Joyce at Project Gutenberg
A limited collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

James Joyce web links James Joyce at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of the major works, religion, music, list of biographies, and external web links.

James Joyce on film James Joyce at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plus box office, technical credits, and quizzes.

James Joyce exhibition James Joyce Centre in Dublin
Exhibition centre, walking tours, lectures, and newsletter. The latest addition is a graphic novel version of ‘Ulysses’.

James Joyce web links The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection
University of Wisconsin – digitised scans of Finnegans Wake and out-of-print studies on Joyce’s language, plus rare critical studies.

James Joyce web links An Annotated Ulysses
An online version of Ulysses with hyperlinks giving explanations of obscure and classical references in the text.

James Joyce web links Cornell’s James Joyce Collection
Cornell University – a collection of letters, manuscripts, and books documenting the life and work of James Joyce on exhibition in 2005. Particularly strong on Joyce’s early life.

© Roy Johnson 2004


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Filed Under: James Joyce Tagged With: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Finnegans Wake, James Joyce, Literary studies, Modernism, Ulysses

James Joyce web links

December 9, 2010 by Roy Johnson

a selection of web-based archives and resources

This short selection of James Joyce web links offers quick connections to resources for further study. It’s not comprehensive, and if you have any ideas for additional resources, please use the ‘Comments’ box below to make suggestions.

James Joyce - portrait

James Joyce – web links

James Joyce web links James Joyce at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

James Joyce web links James Joyce at Project Gutenberg
A limited collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

James Joyce web links James Joyce at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of the major works, religion, music, list of biographies, and external web links.

James Joyce on film James Joyce at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plus box office, technical credits, and quizzes.

James Joyce exhibition James Joyce Centre in Dublin
Exhibition centre, walking tours, lectures, and newsletter. The latest addition is a graphic novel version of ‘Ulysses’.

James Joyce web links The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection
University of Wisconsin – digitised scans of Finnegans Wake and out-of-print studies on Joyce’s language, plus rare critical studies.

James Joyce web links An Annotated Ulysses
An online version of Ulysses with hyperlinks giving explanations of obscure and classical references in the text.

James Joyce web links Cornell’s James Joyce Collection
Cornell University – a collection of letters, manuscripts, and books documenting the life and work of James Joyce on exhibition in 2005. Particularly strong on Joyce’s early life.

James Joyce web links A Bibliography of Scholarship and Criticism
Slightly dated but still useful web-based compilation of criticism and commentary – covers Joyce himself, plus the stories and novels.


James Joyce and Samuel Beckett

Very funny short film featuring James Joyce playing pitch and put with Samuel Beckett


The Cambridge Companion to James JoyceThe Cambridge Companion to James Joyce contains eleven essays by an international team of leading Joyce scholars. The topics covered include his debt to Irish and European writers and traditions, his life in Paris, and the relation of his work to the ‘modern’ spirit of sceptical relativism. One essay describes Joyce’s developing achievement in his earlier works (Stephen Hero, Dubliners, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). Another tackles his best-known text, asking the basic question ‘What is Ulysses about, and how can it be read?’ The issue of ‘difficulty’ raised by Finnegans Wake is directly addressed, and the reader is taken through questions of theme, language, structure and meaning, as well as the book’s composition and the history of Wake criticism.
The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce Buy the book here

© Roy Johnson 2010


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Filed Under: James Joyce Tagged With: English literature, James Joyce, Literary studies, Modernism, The novel

Jorge Luis Borges biography

December 6, 2010 by Roy Johnson

essayist, librarian, master of the modern short story

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) – full name Jorge Francisco Isodoro Luis Borges Acevedo – was born in Buenos Aires Argentina into an educated middle-class family. His father was a lawyer and a teacher of psychology who was part Spanish, part Portuguese, and half English. His mother was Uruguayan of Spanish descent. They lived in a lower-class suburb famous for its cabarets, brothels, knife fights and the tango.

Jorge Luis Borges - portrait

He grew up in a house speaking both English and Spanish (as a child he thought they were the same language) and was he taught at home until he was eleven years old. The family lived in a large house with over one thousand volumes in English in its library. Despite the raffish nature of the neighbourhood, Borges reflected later in life that the two principal features of his childhood were his father’s library and a large garden – both of which feature prominently in his writing.

When he was only nine years old Borges translated Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince into Spanish, and it was published in a local journal. His friends all thought it was the work of his father.

In 1914 the family moved to Geneva, Switzerland where his father was seeking treatment for his failing eyesight. Borges attended school, learned French, read Carlyle in English, and began to study philosophy in German. The family travelled to Spain, and because of political unrest in Argentina at the time, decided to stay in Switzerland during the war.

Jorge Luis Borges received his baccalauréate from the College de Geneve in 1918. The family stayed in Europe after the war, living in Lugano, Barcelona, Majorca, Seville, and Madrid. Whilst in Spain Borges became attracted to the avant garde Ultraist literary movement inspired by Appolinaire and Marinetti. He also published his first poems.

In 1921 the family returned to Buenos Aires, where Borges published his first collection of poems Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923) a sixty-four page booklet paid for by his father and with a cover designed by his sister Norah. There was no profit made from this enterprise: he simply gave the book away to anybody who was interested. He produced journalism, essays, and book reviews, and contributed to the avant-garde review Martin Fierro.

The family returned to Switzerland in 1923 so that his father could resume treatment for his eyes, and when they returned to Argentina the following year, Borges discovered that he had developed a reputation as poet on the strength of his first book. In 1929 his book Cuaderno San Martin won a Municipal Prize, the prize money for which he spent on a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica.

In 1931 Borges began publishing in the literary journal Sur established by Victoria Ocampo, which helped him to establish his literary reputation. He wrote works including parodies of detective stories with another Argentinean writer Adolfo Bioy Casares under the name H. Bustos Domecq. He also began to explore existential themes in his work, drawing a great deal of his inspiration not from his own personal life, but from his experience of literature.

He was appointed editor at the literary supplement of newspaper Critica in 1933 where he published works that were a blend of non-fictional essays and short stories. These were later collected under the title of A Universal History of Infamy (1936). The collection explored two types of writing. The first used a combination of the essay and the short story to tell what were really true stories. The second were literary spoofs or forgeries – texts which he passed off as translations of little-known works, but which were in fact his own inventions.

In 1935 he published the prototype of what is now considered a typical ‘Borgesian’ short story – ‘The Approach to Mu’tasim – a review of an imaginary novel. He had been influenced by his reading of Thomas Carlyle’s Sator Resartus, a book comprised of reflections on the work and life of an imaginary German philosopher. It is a mark of Borges preference for shorter literary genres (and what he jokingly called his ‘laziness’) that rather than creating complete imaginary works, he thought it was more inventive to conjure up their existence by writing reviews of them as if they actually existed.

Between 1936 and 1939 he wrote a weekly column for El Hogar, and in 1939 found work as an assistant in the Buenos Aires Municipal Library. His duties were so light he could complete them in the first hour. He spent the rest of the day in the basement, writing and translating the work of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner into Spanish. His first volume of short stories The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) collected work he had previously published in Sur.

His eyesight began to fade in the late 1930s and, unable to support himself as a writer, he began giving public lectures. He lived with his widowed mother, who became his personal secretary. Although he relied a great deal on his imaginative responses to literature, he never learned to read Braille. He became completely blind by the late 1950s.

When Juan Peron came to power in 1946 Borges was ‘promoted’ to the job of Inspector of Rabbits and Poultry in the Public Markets, a post from which he immediately resigned. He was elected to the presidency of the Argentine Writer’s Society in 1950 and given the job of director of the National Library in 1955, even though he was by that time completely blind.

Some of his work was translated into English during the 1940s and 1950s, but his international reputation dates from the early 1960s when he was awarded the International Publisher’s Prize, the Prix Formentor – which he shared with Samuel Beckett. He was appointed for a year to the Chair of literature at the University of Texas at Austin, and went on to give lecture tours in America and Europe.

Two major anthologies of his work were published in 1962 – Ficciones and Layrinths – which further enhanced his international reputation. In 1967 Borges embarked on a five year period of collaboration with the American translator Norman Thomas di Giovanni which helped to make his work better known in the English-speaking world.

Then in 1967 Jorge Luis Borges married an old friend Elsa Astete Millan who had become a widow, but the marriage only lasted three years. Borges went back to his mother, with whom he lived until her death at the age of almost one hundred. He travelled extensively on lecture tours, and published further collections of his work – The Book of Sand, Dr Brodie’s report, and The Book of Imaginary Beings.

In 1986, a few months before his death, he married his literary assistant Maria Kodama, who thereby gained control of his literary estate and the considerable income from it. Despite international protests, she rescinded all publishing rights for the existing collections of his work and commissioned new translations.

© Roy Johnson 2010


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Filed Under: Biography, Jorge Luis Borges Tagged With: Jorge Luis Borges, Literary studies, Modernism, The Short Story

Joseph Conrad and Cinema

May 22, 2016 by Roy Johnson

film adaptations of Joseph Conrad’s novels and stories

Joseph Conrad and Cinema (literature and film) might seem an odd juxtaposition of genres, but in fact almost a hundred adaptations of Conrad’s works have been made for cinema and television. His work has also been transposed to works for opera and for television. The following selection was made on the basis of films which are currently available in DVD format.

There seem to be three theories of adaptation from prose narrative to cinema – just as there are three notions of translation from one language to another. The film critic Geoffrey Wagner described these as transposition, commentary, and analogy.

The first (transposition) is used to describe an attempt to make the cinematic adaptation of a literary text as accurate and as close to the original as possible in the language of film. This means that there will be no significant additions, deletions, or changes to the original.

The second (commentary) allows for the raw materials of a narrative to be rearranged or used as the basis for a re-interpretation of the basic story line. In this case the sequence of events in a drama might be given a different chronological arrangement, or its characters given new descriptions or motivations.

In the third (analogy) the source materials are used as the inspiration for a completely new creation which acts as an analogy or a metaphor of the original. In this case a story might be transposed to a different historical period or a different cinematic genre. The original will still be recognised, but it is being used for a different purpose.


Victory (novel 1913 – film 1996)

This was the first of Joseph Conrad’s works to be turned into a film when an American silent movie version was released in 1919. A second version appeared in 1930 produced by Paramount with the title Dangerous Paradise, which was one of the earliest films with a sound track recorded at sea. There was another Paramount version in 1940 directed by John Cromwell.

Coming from the Hollywood world of popular entertainment, it is not surprising that these three film versions focus their attention on the sentimental romantic link between a heroic protagonist (Heyst) and the threatened heroine (Alma) whom he rescues. The emphasis of the film versions is on exotic locations and a conventional love story. All three adaptations conclude with the very un-Conradian device of a happy ending – which completely destroys the bitter dramatic ironies in the events and personal tragedies of the original text. Later versions such as the 1996 adaptation below remain more faithful to the original plot.

Directed and adapted by Mark Peploe. Starring – Willem Dafoe (Axel Heyst), Sam Neil (Mr Jones), Rufus Sewell (Martin Ricardo), Irene Jacob (Alma), Simon Callow (Zangiacomo), Jean Yanne (Wilhelm Schomberg), and Mark Patterson (Captain Davidson). This version was filmed in Java.

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Victory – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Details of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Victory – a tutorial and study guide

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Victory – Oxford Classics- Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Victory – Oxford Classics – Amazon US


The Secret Agent (novel 1907 – film 1936)

One of the most celebrated adaptations of a Conrad text is Alfred Hitchcock’s version of The Secret Agent, which was re-named Sabotage (1936) for cinema release in England. This was to distinguish it from Hitchcock’s other film Secret Agent based on the Ashenden stories by Somerset Maugham which was produced in the same year. When Sabotage was released two months later in the United States it was re-named yet again as The Woman Alone. This proved unpopular, so the original title was restored.

Hitchcock takes enormous liberties with the substance of Conrad’s deeply ironic political thriller: He invents a positive hero (the police sergeant, Ted); he creates a romantic liaison with the main female character Winnie Verloc; and he even gives the story a happy ending.

Hitchcock plays down the collusion that exists in the novel between government and anarchists, and the upper class society in which representatives of both groups circulate. And in a typical piece of self-reference, he transposes Verloc’s seedy newsagent’s shop (selling pornography) to a cinema.

Despite these changes, the film captures some of the tone of the original text – largely because Hitchcock, like Conrad, is fond of using irony – in his case visual juxtapositions that create a satirical author’s point of view on events – something with which Conrad’s text is drenched from start to finish.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Charles Bennett. Starring – Sylvia Sidney (Winnie Verloc), Oscar Homulka (Adolf Verloc), John Loder (Sergeant Ted), and Desmond Tester (Stevie). Filmed at Gainsborough Studios, London.

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Sabotage – Hitchcock’s 1936 film adaptation – Amazon UK

Red button Details of the film – the Internet Movie Database

Joseph Conrad and Cinema The Secret Agent – a tutorial and study guide

Joseph Conrad and Cinema The Secret Agent – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad and Cinema The Secret Agent – Oxford Classics – Amazon US


A 1996 version, written and directed by Christopher Hampton, stays reasonably close to the original story line, but despite an all-star (yet ill-assorted) cast the result is a less than convincing whole – which probably accounts for the film’s mediocre rating of 50% at Rotten Tomatoes.

Directed by Christopher Hampton, screenplay by Christopher Hampton, with music by Philip Glass. Starring – Bob Hoskins (Adolf Verloc), Patricia Arquette (Winnie Verloc), Gerard Depardieu (Ossipon), Jim Broadbent (Chief Inspector Heat), Eddie Izzard (Vladimir), Robin Williams (The Professor). Filmed in Ealing Studios and Greenwich, London.

Joseph Conrad and Cinema The Secret Agent – 1996 film adaptation on DVD – Amazon UK


Heart of Darkness (novella 1902 – film 1979)

Without doubt the best known cinematic adaptation of Conrad’s work is
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), his version of Heart of Darkness. It is successful precisely because it is not a faithful reproduction of the original novella, but a very imaginative interpretation of it.

The film realization transforms events from Europe’s imperialist exploitation of the Belgian Congo to America’s war in Vietnam in the 1960s. Even so, it remains amazingly faithful to the original. The narrator Marlow becomes Captain Willard, who is sent on a mission to terminate (‘with extreme prejudice’) the command of rogue Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, who has gone over the border into Cambodia with a band of followers.

It is worth noting that the film exists in a number of different versions – because it was edited several times. Minor variations aside, the most significant alternative option is called Apocalypse Now – Redux. This extended version includes a long sequence that was cut from the original where Willard visits an old French colonial plantation. I have watched both versions several times, and in my opinion the inclusion of the French plantation episode slows down the film and retards its dramatic momentum.

The only other point of note is that the film was originally distributed with two separate endings. In one, Willard kills Kurtz then returns to his boat and calls in an air strike which will (presumably) destroy the encampment. In the other he merely switches off the radio that is trying to contact him, and he sails away, back down river.

Director Francis Ford Coppola. Screenplay by Coppola and John Milius. Starring – Marlon Brando (Colonel Kurtz), Robert Duval (Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore), Martin Sheen (Captain Willard), Dennis Hopper (Photo Journalist), Harrison Ford (Colonel Lucas), Sam Bottoms (Lance Johnson). Filmed in the Philippines.

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Apocalypse Now – 1979 DVD film – Amazon UK

Red button Details of the film – the Internet Movie Database

Joseph Conrad and Film Heart of Darkness – a tutorial and study guide

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Heart of Darkness – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Heart of Darkness – Oxford Classics – Amazon US


In 1939 Orson Welles planned to make a film version of Heart of Darkness, but the project ran over budget and ultimately was abandoned. Welles turned the adaptation into a work for radio, and the following year made Citizen Kane instead.

There is also a 1994 version by the English director Nicholas Roeg that stays reasonably close to the original narrative. This stars John Malkovich (Kurtz) and Tim Roth (Marlow), with James Fox in a supporting role. This adaptation was made for Ted Turner’s television network. Filmed in Belize and London, UK.

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Heart of Darkness – 1994 DVD film – Amazon UK


Lord Jim (novel 1900 – film 1965)

This 1965 adaptation of Lord Jim by Richard Brooks turns the dark moral complexities of the original novel into an epic action-adventure story shot in wide-screen Technicolour. It also reduces the fragmented temporal arrangement of events into a simplified linear narrative, as well as blending some of the characters. There is also considerable simplification of the political and racial issues of the original narrative. Moreover, the central figure is transformed and loses all semblance of ambiguity. As the critic Gene M. Moore observes: ‘The Jim of the film is a conscious political activist in the style of the sixties, a determined man of action, quite unlike Conrad’s ‘romantic’ protagonist.’

Directed and adapted by Richard Brooks. Starring – Peter O’Toole (Jim), James Mason (Gentleman Brown), Curt Jurgens (Cornelius), Eli Wallach (The General), Jack Hawkins (Marlow), Dalia Lavi (The Girl), and Akim Tamiroff (Schomberg). Filmed in Hong Kong and Cambodia, with additional scenes in Shepperton Studios, London.

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Lord Jim – DVD – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Details of the film – at the Internet Movie Database

Joseph Conrad and Film Lord Jim – a tutorial and study guide

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Lord Jim – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Lord Jim – Oxford Classics – Amazon US


An Outcast of the Islands (novel 1896 – film 1951)

Joseph Conrad and Cinema

This is highly regarded amongst film critics as an acceptable combination of a faithful account of the original text with a persuasive film in its own right. Director Carol Reed sticks closely to the plot of the original novel, although he completely changes the geographic locations of the action. He also disregards some of the racial details which are an important part of ethnic tensions in the original narrative.

However, the most glaring difference between the novel and its adaptation is that Reed only uses four of the book’s five parts. In the original text, the protagonist Willems is killed by his mistress the native girl Alssa when his wife Joanna suddenly arrives, whereas in the film Willems is merely banished to live in isolation. This weaker ending was probably a concession to the Hollywood Production Code which prevailed at the time for films shown in the USA. This was a set of moral guidelines (also known as the Hays Code) which specified what was and was not acceptable for on-screen viewing. These rules included forbidding the depiction of crimes that go unpunished.

Directed by Carol Reed, screenplay by William Fairchild, with music by Brian Easdale. Filmed in Sri Lanka and Shepperton Studios, London. Starring – Ralph Richardson (Captain Lingard), Trevor Howard (Peter Willems), Wendy Hiller (Mrs Almayer), Wilfred Hyde White (Mr Vinck), Kerima (Alssa). Filmed in Sri Lanka and Shepperton Studios, London.

Red button An Outcast of the Islands – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

Red button Details of the film – at Internet Movie Database

Joseph Conrad and Cinema An Outcast of the Islands – a tutorial and study guide

Joseph Conrad and Cinema An Outcast of the Islands – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad and Cinema An Outcast of the Islands – Oxford Classics – Amazon US


Amy Foster (story 1901 – film 1997)

This is one of Conrad’s long short stories – some might call it a novella – which was adapted in 1997 by (Baroness) Beeban Kidron as a feature film (originally re-named Swept from the Sea). It tells the story of a poor economic migrant from Eastern Europe who is the sole survivor of a shipwreck in the English Channel. He has lost everything, is hungry, wretched, and knows no English. The local inhabitants regard him as a madman, shun him, and throw stones at him. He is befriended by Amy Foster and settles down with her to create a family. But what appears to be a tale of positive redemption turns into a grim parable of a pessimistic or even tragic view of the world.

Director: Beeban Kidron. Screenplay: Tim Willocks.. Starring – Vincent Perez (Yanko Gooral), Ian McKellan (Dr James Kennedy), Kathy Bates (Mrs Swaffer), Rachel Weisz (Amy Foster), Joss Ackland (Mr Swaffer), and Zoe Wannamaker (Mary Foster). British/American, Tapson Steel Films and Phoenix Pictures. Filmed in Cornwall, UK.

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Amy Foster – DVD film adaptation – Amazon UK

Red button Details of the film – at Internet Movie Database

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Amy Foster – a tutorial and study guide

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Amy Foster – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Amy Foster – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Joseph Conrad and Cinema Amy Foster – Kindle eBook (includes screenplay)

© Roy Johnson 2016


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Joseph Conrad biography

September 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

timeline of life, career, and literary works

Joseph Conrad biography1857. Joseph Conrad (full original name Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) born December 3 in Berdichev (or vicinity) to Apollo Nalecz Korzeniowski and Evelina (Ewa) Bobrowska. Poland at that time is under the control of Russia.

1862. Conrad’s father exiled to Russia because of his political liberalism, accompanied by his wife and son.

1865. Conrad’s mother dies. Conrad taken into care of maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski.

1869. Conrad and his father return to Cracow. Father dies. Conrad sporadically attends school in Cracow.

1873. Leaves for a three-month-long stay in Switzerland and northern Italy. Announces his wish to have a career at sea, which the family resists.

1874. Leaves Cracow for Marseilles to begin life as a sailor on French ships.

1875. Apprentice on the Mont-Blanc, bound for Martinique.

1876-77. From January to July in Marseilles; from July to February 1877 on schooner Saint-Antoine to West Indies.

1877. Acquires (with three other men) the tartane, the Tremolino which carries arms illegally to the supporters of Don Carlos, the Spanish pretender. Conrad probably escaping from gambling debts accrued in Monte Carlo.


The Cambridge Companion to Joseph ConradThe Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.


1878-79. Mounting financial problems. In February attempts suicide by shooting himself through the chest (which he later passed off as injury in a duel). Uncle Bobrowski pays off his debts and arranges for him to be transferred to England. On April 24 leaves Marseilles on British steamer Mavis. On June 18 sets foot in England at Lowestoft. Serves as ordinary seaman on coaster The Skimmer of the Sea.

1883. Passes mate’s examination on July 4. Meets uncle Bobrowski at Marienbad. Mate on the sailing ship Riversdale.

1884. Second mate on the Narcissus, bound from Bombay to Dunkirk.

1885-86. Second mate on the Tilkhurst; August 19, receives British certificate of naturalization. November 11, passes examination, receives his ‘Certificate of Competency as Master’. His first story, ‘The Black Mate’, submitted to Tit-Bits.

1887. First mate on Highland Forest. Hurt by a falling spar, hospitalized in Singapore (experience recalled in Lord Jim). Second mate on steamship Vidar (Singapore-Borneo).

1888. On Melita (bound for Bangkok), then his first command on the barque the Otago (Bangkok-Sydney-Mauritius-Port Adelaide). Experiences described in The Shadow-Line, Victory, The Secret Sharer. A Smile of Fortune, and other works.

1889. Summer in London; begins writing Almayer’s Folly.

1890. First trip to Poland since he left in 1874. In May he leaves for the Congo. Second in command, then in command of S. S. Roi de Belges.

1891-93. First mate on Torrens. English passenger (Jacques) reads the first nine chapters of Almayer’s Folly, offers encouragement; meets John Galsworthy aboard the ship. Visits uncle Bobrowski in Poland.

1893-94. Second mate on Adowa (London-Rouen-London). Ends his career as seaman on January 14.

1894. Uncle Bobrowski dies on January 29, 1894. In April Conrad sends Almayer’s Folly to T. Fisher Unwin.

1894-95. Writes An Outcast of the Islands.


Complete Critical Guide to Joseph Conrad - Click for details at AmazonThe Complete Critical Guide to Joseph Conrad is a good introduction to Conrad criticism. It includes a potted biography, an outline of the stories and novels, and pointers towards the main critical writings – from the early comments by his contemporaries to critics of the present day. Also includes a thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Conrad journals. These guides are very popular. Recommended.


1896. March 24, marries Jessie George.

1897. Completes The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’; friendship with R. B. Cunninghame Graham.

1898. Son Alfred Borys born January 14. In October moves to Petit Farm, Kent.

1899. In February completes Heart of Darkness.

1900. Finishes Lord Jim.

1904. Nostromo. Writes the memoir The Mirror of the Sea. Wife falls ill, and becomes practically an invalid.

1905. Spends four months in Europe.

1906. Spends two months in France. Second son John Alexander born August 2.

1907. Children ill in France. Returns to Pent Farm in August. The Secret Agent.

1908. A Set of Six (short stories).

1910. In June moves to Capel House, Kent. Seriously ill.

1911. Under Western Eyes.

1912. ‘Twixt Land and Sea, Tales.

1913-14. Chance. Writes Victory. Leaves for Poland in July 1914; meets Stefan Zeromski in Zakopane; caught by the war in August; escapes and returns to Capel House November 3.

1915. Victory. Within the Tides.

1916. Borys fights on the French front.

1917. The Shadow-Line. Writes prefaces for a new collected edition of his works.

1918. Borys, gassed and wounded, is hospitalized in Le Havre.

1919. The Arrow of Gold. Moves to Oswalds, Bishopbourne, near Canterbury, where he spends the last years of his life.

1920. The Rescue.

1921. Visits Corsica. Notes on Life and Letters.

1923. Visits New York (April-June). Reading from his Victory at home of Mrs. Arthur Curtiss James, May 10. The Secret Agent, Drama in Four Acts (adaptation of the novel). The Rover. Laughing Anne, a play (adaptation of “Because of the Dollars”).

1924. Jacob Epstein does Conrad’s bust. In May Conrad declines knighthood. Health deteriorates and he is bedridden. His wife is also ill. Both sons and Richard Curle are with them. Dies of heart attack 3 August. Buried in Canterbury.

1925. Suspense (incomplete). Tales of Hearsay.

1926. Last Essays.

1928. The Sisters (written in 1896; incomplete.)

1936. Jessie Conrad dies 6 December. Buried near her husband at Canterbury.

© Roy Johnson 2004


Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad - tutorials Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Red button Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad - eBooks Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad - further reading Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad - adaptations Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Joseph Conrad - etexts Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

Joseph Conrad - journal The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

Conrad US journal The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Joseph Conrad - concordance Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.


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Joseph Conrad close reading

March 18, 2014 by Roy Johnson

how to read and analyse a text

In literary studies there are various types of close reading. It is possible and rewarding to scrutinise a text closely, keeping any number of its features in mind. These can reveal various layers of significance in the work which might not be apparent on a superficial reading. You might focus attention on the text’s – Joseph Conrad close reading

  • language
  • meaning
  • structure
  • philosophy

The most advanced forms of close reading combine all these features in an effort to reveal the full and even hidden meanings in a work. The following tutorial shows a very simple form of close reading. It pays attention to the first two of these approaches – looking at the language that Conrad uses and how it is closely linked to what we know about the text.

This type of exercise can only be successful once the text has been read in its entirety. You need a grasp of the events and the story as a whole before it is possible to see how its meaning(s) are built up from small linguistic features of the narrative.

The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov once observed ‘Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only re-read it’. What he meant by this apparently contradictory remark is that the first time we read a text we are busy absorbing information, and we cannot appreciate all the subtle connections there may be between its parts – because we don’t yet have the complete picture before us. Only when we read it for a second time (or even better, a third or fourth) are we in a position to assemble and compare the nuances of meaning and the significance of its details in relation to each other.

This is why the activity is called ‘close reading’. You should try to get used to the notion of reading and re-reading very carefully, scrupulously, and in great detail.

The extract which follows is the opening of Conrad’s early story An Outpost of Progress, first published in 1897. It deals with two European characters who have recently arrived at a trading station somewhere in central Africa. If you wish to read the complete story in conjunction with these tutorial notes, it is available free at Project Gutenberg.

redbtn An Outpost of Progress


Joseph Conrad close reading


An Outpost of Progress – the opening lines

There were two white men in charge of the trading station. Kayerts, the chief, was short and fat; Carlier, the assistant, was tall, with a large head and a very broad trunk perched upon a long pair of thin legs. The third man on the staff was a Sierra Leone nigger, who maintained that his name was Henry Price. However, for some reason or other, the natives down the river had given him the name of Makola, and it stuck to him through all his wanderings about the country. He spoke English and French with a warbling accent, wrote a beautiful hand, understood bookkeeping, and cherished in his innermost heart the worship of evil spirits. His wife was a negress from Loanda, very large and very noisy. Three children rolled about in sunshine before the door of his low, shed-like dwelling. Makola, taciturn and impenetrable, despised the two white men. He had charge of a small clay storehouse with a dried-grass roof, and pretended to keep a correct account of beads, cotton cloth, red kerchiefs, brass wire, and other trade goods it contained. Besides the storehouse and Makola’s hut, there was only one large building in the cleared ground of the station. It was built neatly of reeds, with a verandah on all the four sides. There were three rooms in it. The one in the middle was the living-room, and had two rough tables and a few stools in it. The other two were the bedrooms for the white men. Each had a bedstead and a mosquito net for all furniture. The plank floor was littered with the belongings of the white men; open half-empty boxes, torn wearing apparel, old boots; all the things dirty, and all the things broken, that accumulate mysteriously round untidy men. There was also another dwelling-place some distance away from the buildings. In it, under a tall cross much out of the perpendicular, slept the man who had seen the beginning of all this; who had planned and had watched the construction of this outpost of progress.


Close reading

01.   ‘White men’ is significant because the story is about the exploitation of black Africans by white Europeans. And ‘in charge’ is mildly ironic because we rapidly learn that they are only nominally in charge. It is their African assistant Makola who really determines what goes on, whilst they are hopelessly incompetent.

02.   The names ‘Kayerts’ and ‘Carlier’ tell us that the setting of the story is the Belgian Congo. Carlier is a French name, Kayerts is Flemish, and these are the two linguistic groups which comprise Belgium. The physical descriptions contrast the two men in a way that makes them slightly ridiculous, rather like the fat and thin man of comedy stereotypes. The term ‘perched’ reinforces this.

03.   ‘Maintained’ suggests just the opposite – that Makola has given himself the name Henry Price because he wants to identify his interests with those of his European employers. Conrad’s use of the racist term ‘nigger’ would have been considered unremarkable in 1897 when he wrote the story.

04.   The natives call him ‘Makola’ — and so does Conrad, which reinforces our interpretation of the previous sentence. His ‘wanderings’ suggest that he is experienced.

05.   Makola speaks two foreign languages in addition to his own native African language and his wife’s, which would be different. He is also a skilled clerk. Thus he has absorbed European culture, in contrast to the two Europeans, who are completely incapable of absorbing his culture. Yet he still worships evil spirits. He has a foot in both cultures.

06.   Loanda is on the coast of Angola, close to what was once called the ‘Slave Coast’. This is why it is ‘Mrs Price’ who understands what the slave traders are saying later in the story.

07.   ‘Rolled about’ suggests that the children are at ease in their natural environment. ‘Shed-like’ tells us how poor their accommodation is.

08.   ‘Impenetrable’ (a typically Conradian term) suggests that he keeps his feelings and motivation well hidden. It is a similar term to those which Conrad uses later to describe the topographical surroundings – ‘hopeless’ and ‘irresistible’. Such details contribute to why Africa in a moral sense defeats Europe in the story. ‘Despised’ however is a key insight into Makola’s judgement and feelings: this points to the element of racial conflict in the story.

09.   We notice that the ‘trade goods’ are an assortment of cheap rubbish. They are being traded for ivory, which is a precious commodity in Europe. The Africans are therefore being cheated by the Europeans. But ‘pretended’ tells us that Makola might be engaged in a little cooking-of-the-books on his own account.

10.   ‘Only one large building’: this is a very undeveloped trading station, and its isolation is emphasised.

11.   ‘Neatly’ and ‘verandah’ contrast sharply with Makola’s ‘shed-like’ dwelling. In other words, the Europeans have the better accommodation.

12.   The furniture is sparse, but the two men have a room each.

13.   The mosquito net would be very important: they are close to the equator , and therefore a long way from their European homeland.

14.   Notice how the two men do not know how to look after themselves. The floor is ‘littered’ with their ‘broken’ and ‘dirty’ goods. And how inappropriate some of those goods are: they have brought ‘town wearing apparel’ when they are in the tropics.

15.   ‘Dwelling place’ is another irony of Conrad’s as the narrator of the story. What he is referring to is the grave of the first station chief who has died of fever. So, Africa has already killed off one representative of Europe when the story opens.

16.   Conrad piles on more grim humour with the expression that the first director ‘slept’ under the cross – an ironic euphemism given that the director is dead. There is also a neat structural link here – because this is also the location of the story’s ending, where Kayerts will commit suicide, hanging himself on the cross.


Joseph Conrad close readingStudying Fiction is an introduction to the basic concepts and the language you will need for studying prose fiction. It explains the elements of literary analysis one at a time, then shows you how to apply them. The guidance starts off with simple issues of language, then progresses to more complex literary criticism.The volume contains stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Katherine Mansfield, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, and Charles Dickens. All of them are excellent tales in their own right. The guidance on this site was written by the same author.
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Joseph Conrad close reading

Joseph Conrad’s writing table


Further reading

Red button Amar Acheraiou Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Red button Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Red button Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010

Red button Hillel M. Daleski , Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Red button Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Red button Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985

Red button John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940

Red button Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958

Red button Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992

Red button Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979

Red button Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990

Red button Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Red button Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Red button Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008

Red button Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976

Red button Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985

Red button Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Red button Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

Red button George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

Red button John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Red button James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Red button Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966

Red button Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

Red button J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

Red button John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Red button Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Red button Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980

Red button Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.


Joseph Conrad – video biography


Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad Lord JimLord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
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Joseph Conrad Heart of DarknessHeart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
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© Roy Johnson 2014


Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.


More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
More on Joseph Conrad tales


Filed Under: Joseph Conrad Tagged With: Close reading, English literature, Joseph Conrad, Literary studies, Study skills

Joseph Conrad critical bibliography

June 30, 2010 by Roy Johnson

selected literary criticism and commentary

Joseph Conrad critical bibliography Amar Acheraiou, Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Joseph Conrad critical bibliography Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Joseph Conrad critical bibliography Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Joseph Conrad critical bibliography Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Martin Bock and Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad and Psychological Medicine, Texas Tech Press, 2002.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Hillel M. Daleski, Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Joseph Conrad bibliography Stephen Donovan, Joseph Conrad and Popular Culture, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Wilfred S. Dowden, Joseph Conrad: The Imagined Style, Vanderbilt University Press, 1970.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Adam Gillon and Raymond Brebach, Joseph Conrad: Comparative Essays, Texas Tech Press, 1993.

Joseph Conrad bibliography John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Richard J. Hand, The Theatre of Joseph Conrad: Reconstructed Fictions, London: Macmillan, 2005.

Joseph Conrad bibliography G.G. Harpham, One of Us: Mastery of Joseph Conrad, Chicago University Press, 1997..

Joseph Conrad bibliography Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Lindsay Newman and Yves Hervouet, The French Face of Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Kieron O’Hara, Joseph Conrad Today, Imprint Academic, 2007.

Joseph Conrad bibliography George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

Joseph Conrad bibliography John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Joseph Conrad bibliography James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Richard J. Ruppel, Homosexuality in the Life and Work of Joseph Conrad: Love Between the Lines, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Norman Sherry, Joseph Conrad: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1997.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad in Context, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Joseph Conrad bibliography J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Joseph Conrad bibliography John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.

Joseph Conrad bibliography Andrea White, Joseph Conrad and the Adventure Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Joseph Conrad critical bibliography

© Roy Johnson 2010


Joseph Conrad links

Joseph Conrad - tutorials Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Red button Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad - eBooks Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad - further reading Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad - adaptations Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Joseph Conrad - etexts Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

Joseph Conrad - journal The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

Conrad US journal The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Joseph Conrad - concordance Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.


More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
More on Joseph Conrad tales


Filed Under: Joseph Conrad Tagged With: Bibliography, Joseph Conrad, Literary studies, Modernism, The novel

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