Space, Conrad, and Modernity

by Con Coroneos

Overview

Recent literary and cultural criticism has taken a spatial turn. Nowadays, to speak is to speak from, to, or in; to know something is to have "mapped" its discursive operation. Focusing on the work of Joseph Conrad, in whom the opposition between a space of words and a space of things is strikingly figured, this book locates this development within the opposition between a space of things and a space of words. Among the figures drawn into dialogue with Conrad are John Buchan, Woolf, Joyce, Peter Kropotkin, René de Saussure (brother of the famous Ferdinand), Henri Bergson, the filmmakers George Méliès and Carol Reed and, in particular, Michel Foucault, whose anxious negotiation with spatial ideas touches the book's deepest understanding.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198187363
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/25/2002
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

St John's College, University of Cambridge

Table of Contents

Introduction1. I: Closed space:2. Hearless modernism3. The idiom of Idiom Neutral4. II: Language to infinity:5. Why Bergson laughs6. Do the police have dreams? Conclusion Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"What distinguishes Con Coroneos's Space, Conrad, and Modernity is panache, that incomparable blend of wit and chutzpah.... A series of brilliant intellectual riffs that soar like jazz solos, proceeding by association rather than logic, from John Buchan to Orson Welles, from seances to semiotics.... The book appeals to the reader who looks to criticism for a serious yet playful engagement with ideas. For this idea-laden, theory-laced work of literary criticism is above all a good read. That this description is not an oxymoron suggests that Coroneos's book is a rare and notable achievement."—English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

From the Publisher