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Book Chapter: Going About: Conrad's Progress in A Personal Record
Title | Going About: Conrad's Progress in A Personal Record |
---|---|
Authors | |
Issue Date | 2015 |
Publisher | University of Cape Town Press |
Citation | Going About: Conrad's Progress in A Personal Record. In Fincham, G., Hawthorn, J & Lothe, J (Eds.), Outposts of Progress: Joseph Conrad, Modernism and Post-Colonialism, p. 156-170. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2015 How to Cite? |
Abstract | This essay considers Conrad’s attempt in A Personal Record to tell his own story – and particularly the transition from sailing to fiction-writing – in such a way as to emphasise the continuities of a life that could well be seen as a series of radical evasions, if not downright denials and betrayals. Early life in Poland, service at sea around the world, and the career of a writer of fiction in England (and English) – it is a polytropic life, of dramatic swerves, yet it mattered a good deal to Conrad to assert that the sailor had not in a true sense abandoned his Polish self, and that the writer of fiction kept his fidelity to the strong values he had found in maritime service. A Personal Record is an apology: it repudiates confession, but does so with a kind of narrative stammer. Far more digressive than progressive, it looks shifty. It seems incapable of being straightforward: it proceeds in a series of fantastic indirections. But this is not simply evasion. There is more than one kind of faithfulness, and sometimes to get from there to here, it is necessary for a vessel to “go about”. This essay argues that, in the uses of indirection and digression and even prevarication, Conrad’s method of going about makes a virtue of necessity, and that the form of A Personal Record can be seen as a comic enactment of a principle of Conrad’s modernism. |
Persistent Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/10722/208327 |
ISBN |
DC Field | Value | Language |
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dc.contributor.author | Kerr, DWF | en_US |
dc.date.accessioned | 2015-02-23T08:24:20Z | - |
dc.date.available | 2015-02-23T08:24:20Z | - |
dc.date.issued | 2015 | en_US |
dc.identifier.citation | Going About: Conrad's Progress in A Personal Record. In Fincham, G., Hawthorn, J & Lothe, J (Eds.), Outposts of Progress: Joseph Conrad, Modernism and Post-Colonialism, p. 156-170. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2015 | en_US |
dc.identifier.isbn | 9781775820819 | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10722/208327 | - |
dc.description.abstract | This essay considers Conrad’s attempt in A Personal Record to tell his own story – and particularly the transition from sailing to fiction-writing – in such a way as to emphasise the continuities of a life that could well be seen as a series of radical evasions, if not downright denials and betrayals. Early life in Poland, service at sea around the world, and the career of a writer of fiction in England (and English) – it is a polytropic life, of dramatic swerves, yet it mattered a good deal to Conrad to assert that the sailor had not in a true sense abandoned his Polish self, and that the writer of fiction kept his fidelity to the strong values he had found in maritime service. A Personal Record is an apology: it repudiates confession, but does so with a kind of narrative stammer. Far more digressive than progressive, it looks shifty. It seems incapable of being straightforward: it proceeds in a series of fantastic indirections. But this is not simply evasion. There is more than one kind of faithfulness, and sometimes to get from there to here, it is necessary for a vessel to “go about”. This essay argues that, in the uses of indirection and digression and even prevarication, Conrad’s method of going about makes a virtue of necessity, and that the form of A Personal Record can be seen as a comic enactment of a principle of Conrad’s modernism. | en_US |
dc.language | eng | en_US |
dc.publisher | University of Cape Town Press | en_US |
dc.relation.ispartof | Outposts of Progress: Joseph Conrad, Modernism and Post-Colonialism | en_US |
dc.title | Going About: Conrad's Progress in A Personal Record | en_US |
dc.type | Book_Chapter | en_US |
dc.identifier.email | Kerr, DWF: kerrdw@hku.hk | en_US |
dc.identifier.authority | Kerr, DWF=rp01163 | en_US |
dc.identifier.hkuros | 242398 | en_US |
dc.identifier.hkuros | 199766 | - |
dc.identifier.spage | 156 | en_US |
dc.identifier.epage | 170 | en_US |
dc.publisher.place | Cape Town | en_US |