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Linda Dryden places Almayer's Folly, An Outcast of the Islands , 'Karain', and Lord Jim in the context of the nineteenth-century imperial romance. Through the thwarted dreams and aspirations of his central characters she argues that Conrad exposes the empty promises of such fiction and challenges assumptions about the superiority of European imperialists and the imperial venture itself. Using illustrations from and references to many well-known novels of Empire, Dryden demonstrates how Conrad's Malay fiction alludes to the conventions and stereotypes of popular imperial fiction.
List of contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction Making the Imperial Hero The Possibilities of Romance Almayer's Folly : When Romance Collides with Reality An Outcast of the Islands : Echoes of Romance 'Karain': Constructing the Romantic Subject Lord Jim : The Limitations of Romance Conclusion Bibliography Index
About the author
Linda Dryden is Lecturer in Cultural Studies in the Department of Print Media, Publishing, and Communication at Napier University, Edinburgh.
Report
'Dryden's detailed analyses make her study an accessible, thorough introduction to Conrad's early fiction.' - Victorian Studies
'Linda Dryden has proven herself a Conrad scholar of the first order, scrutinizing his early, and largely critically ignored, Malay quartet where it subverts...Read Joseph Conrad and the Imperial Romance. It's a refreshing, lucid, twenty-first century look at a solid branch of nineteenth-century lore.' - Eric Madeen, The East
