Summary 1: There is criticism out there called something like body criticism or "body as text". It could be a weird interesting direction to go. What is focalization? I've never heard that term before? 7 pages. 10/10
Summary 2: Very interesting. I'm working to fit this into the HOD and I guess, maybe with Kurtz, but in many ways this fits so much more with the ideas as Conrad/Marlow supposes the natives' bodies. 10/10
Summary 3: 10/10
A Joseph Conrad Companion
summary of main arguments
This article is a comprehensive overview of Joseph Conrad, the person.
Conrad is a complex mixture of cultures and motives–born in a Ukrainian area of Poland under Czarist Russian rule, joining his patriotic parents in forced internment in a remote Russian village, beginning a fitful and frustrating sea career in France, joining the British merchant fleet and eventually reaching the rank of captain, and then beginning to write fiction in English in order to pass the monotonous time on land between journeys. He was never quite at home anywhere, speaking a thickly accented english, traveling through the European imperial outposts in Asia, South America, and Africa. Conrad’s thoroughly unique background has drawn renewed attention in the critical discourse of marginality, post-colonialism, and the construction of identity. Conrad's struggles with writing are always immediately reflected in bodily trouble: rheumatism, nerves, gone to seed, flu, gout, head pains, etc. This only seems natural as english is his second language, but we must also remember that Conrad found little to encourage his writing, either financially or in criticism. Indeed, Polish reviewers treated him as a traitor for living in England, changing his name, and writing in English, while British reviewers felt that by choosing to write in an adopted language and being "nationless," he could not rise above the second rate in english literature. Everyone who met him seems to have commented on his thick accent, grammatical mistakes, odd pronunciation, and excited gestures. We might say that he was in a permanent state of internal exile, as well as external, national exile.
something surprising or interesting learned
Conrad’s early writings reached their heights during the "Blackwood period" from 1898 to 1902 (William Blackwood who became Conrad's steadiest patron and publisher) with Youth, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim, all stories developing Marlow as Conrad's narrative voice and experimenting with a variety of narrative techniques that quickly distanced Conrad from the exotic adventure novelists with whom he was initially associated by reviewers. Conrad's use of ambiguity and uncertainty in these works was already modern, rather than Victorian, and he added to the complexity by using mixed focalizations, narrative frames with an oral tale, embedded texts, and an ironic style.
agree/disagree with the ideas and then apply this to a scene or example from the book (one not mentioned by the critic).
The main premise of this article doesn’t allow me to agree or disagree a claim, but rather, it arms me with detail and with this, the power to accurately infer. Conrad, the person, seeps through in most, if not all, of Conrad’s pieces. The fact that many of his greatest works involved a maritime setting, a character of endurance and complexity, only could mean one thing: Conrad lives on through his works.
Source Citation
Orr, Leonard, and Ted Billy, eds. A Joseph Conrad Companion. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999. Print.
Total of seven pages analyzed.
Designing Men: Reading the Male Body as Text
summary of main arguments
This study is essentially an anthropological text, which scrutinizes the need to scrutinize the male body as text. The thesis of this particular article states the following: there exists no such reality as a heterosexual male body, for it is a socially-constructed textless text (2) which blocks all attempts to read meaning into it.
In order to clearly follow the intended thesis, the author of this article defined two important pieces of information:
Social Constructionism and Reader Response theory. Social Constructionism argues that human identity, both individual and interpersonal, is the product of the social contexts within which we have spent our lives. The foundational assumption of Reader Response is that a text does not have a sole inherent meaning, but has as many possible meanings as its readers bring to it.
There is a clear difference between meaning being inherent in the text and meaning being created through the interaction between the text and the reader. Combining these two independent notions helps us to understand that we read meaning into many things other than the printed page. What we are able to see, value, and respond to in a text is socially constructed, and the meaning we draw from whatever we encounter is essentially generated by ourselves.
Hence, the author proposed the following:
The human body is not simply a blank page upon which words have not yet been written. It is, more aptly, a textless text whose meaning is read by many readers, whether they are invited to read or not. It is a text which is almost always read from the outside, but which always has the potential to be read from the inside, in that the body-bearer may at any point choose to wrest control over the text to interpret it as his or her own, making unique meanings and giving them primacy of place.
something surprising or interesting learned
The two theories that formed the base for Culbertson’s thesis were interesting. Social constructionism and reader response theories are definitely something I can utilize in my paper concerning Conrad.
agree/disagree with the ideas and then apply this to a scene or example from the book (one not mentioned by the critic)
The two books I focused on, Lord Jim and Typhoon, involve male protagonists but also female foils that make their due appearance in the latter parts of the novels. The idea of the male body being a product of social construction (colonialist ideals, in particular) in conjunction with the reader response theory (the possibilities of mutation of meaning due to the rapidly expanding British Empire) could pose to hold some interesting insight into the Conradian male protagonists–Jim and Captain MacWhirr. The first article posed the following question: Are my Conradian novels involve some sort of biographical elements? This particular article posed this question: Were Lord Jim and Captain MacWhirr a product of the social context of Joseph Conrad? With Culbertson’s thesis, I have a beacon that will assist in this particular investigation.
Total of three pages analyzed
Culbertson, Philip. "DESIGNING MEN: READING THE MALE BODY AS TEXT." The Journal of the Society for Textual Reasoning 7 (1998). University of Virginia. Web.
Postcolonial Residue
summary of main arguments
This text explores the notion of postcolonialism in a literary context.
Language seems to be the most obvious of the colonial legacies, especially in countries over which the British Empire left its mark. This becomes evident when one considers the fact that a great amount of postcolonial literature has been written in English. Because language provided reality with the terms and the names of the world in which we live in, perhaps, the effects of language in a colonized country transcend the basic function of speech as communication and acquire a more cultural significance.
This significance placed on language raises the great debate: what should become of the English language in the former British Empire? Should it be rejected, embraced, or perhaps subverted? Does writing in English suggest the betrayal of the mother tongue or the assumption of a new post-colonial identity? Or has it evolved to fit the need of its speakers in the postcolonial world?
something surprising or interesting learned
The difficulty that arises in defining the term postcolonial stems from the implications of the actual word. In simple terms, postcolonialism means "after colonialism." This definition, however, seemed too restrictive, too limiting, for it implied only political independence and suggests that colonialism has completely ended. It does not take into account the continuing, far-reaching effects of colonialism.
agree/disagree with the ideas and then apply this to a scene or example from the book (one not mentioned by the critic)
I have to agree with this one. The Conradian sense of writing is a prime example of the postcolonialist reaction. Just look at Conrad’s writing–it’s not pretty at all. In a way, what makes Conrad so special is his insanely difficult writing style. However, this style may not be the product of not only his Polish origin but also his post colonist sentiment. Maybe the Conradian level of difficulty was a reaction to the enforcement of english among the natives.
Summary 2: Very interesting. I'm working to fit this into the HOD and I guess, maybe with Kurtz, but in many ways this fits so much more with the ideas as Conrad/Marlow supposes the natives' bodies. 10/10
Summary 3: 10/10
A Joseph Conrad Companion
summary of main arguments
This article is a comprehensive overview of Joseph Conrad, the person.
Conrad is a complex mixture of cultures and motives–born in a Ukrainian area of Poland under Czarist Russian rule, joining his patriotic parents in forced internment in a remote Russian village, beginning a fitful and frustrating sea career in France, joining the British merchant fleet and eventually reaching the rank of captain, and then beginning to write fiction in English in order to pass the monotonous time on land between journeys. He was never quite at home anywhere, speaking a thickly accented english, traveling through the European imperial outposts in Asia, South America, and Africa. Conrad’s thoroughly unique background has drawn renewed attention in the critical discourse of marginality, post-colonialism, and the construction of identity. Conrad's struggles with writing are always immediately reflected in bodily trouble: rheumatism, nerves, gone to seed, flu, gout, head pains, etc. This only seems natural as english is his second language, but we must also remember that Conrad found little to encourage his writing, either financially or in criticism. Indeed, Polish reviewers treated him as a traitor for living in England, changing his name, and writing in English, while British reviewers felt that by choosing to write in an adopted language and being "nationless," he could not rise above the second rate in english literature. Everyone who met him seems to have commented on his thick accent, grammatical mistakes, odd pronunciation, and excited gestures. We might say that he was in a permanent state of internal exile, as well as external, national exile.
something surprising or interesting learned
Conrad’s early writings reached their heights during the "Blackwood period" from 1898 to 1902 (William Blackwood who became Conrad's steadiest patron and publisher) with Youth, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim, all stories developing Marlow as Conrad's narrative voice and experimenting with a variety of narrative techniques that quickly distanced Conrad from the exotic adventure novelists with whom he was initially associated by reviewers. Conrad's use of ambiguity and uncertainty in these works was already modern, rather than Victorian, and he added to the complexity by using mixed focalizations, narrative frames with an oral tale, embedded texts, and an ironic style.
agree/disagree with the ideas and then apply this to a scene or example from the book (one not mentioned by the critic).
The main premise of this article doesn’t allow me to agree or disagree a claim, but rather, it arms me with detail and with this, the power to accurately infer. Conrad, the person, seeps through in most, if not all, of Conrad’s pieces. The fact that many of his greatest works involved a maritime setting, a character of endurance and complexity, only could mean one thing: Conrad lives on through his works.
Source Citation
Orr, Leonard, and Ted Billy, eds. A Joseph Conrad Companion. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999. Print.
Total of seven pages analyzed.
Designing Men: Reading the Male Body as Text
summary of main arguments
This study is essentially an anthropological text, which scrutinizes the need to scrutinize the male body as text. The thesis of this particular article states the following: there exists no such reality as a heterosexual male body, for it is a socially-constructed textless text (2) which blocks all attempts to read meaning into it.
In order to clearly follow the intended thesis, the author of this article defined two important pieces of information:
Social Constructionism and Reader Response theory. Social Constructionism argues that human identity, both individual and interpersonal, is the product of the social contexts within which we have spent our lives. The foundational assumption of Reader Response is that a text does not have a sole inherent meaning, but has as many possible meanings as its readers bring to it.
There is a clear difference between meaning being inherent in the text and meaning being created through the interaction between the text and the reader. Combining these two independent notions helps us to understand that we read meaning into many things other than the printed page. What we are able to see, value, and respond to in a text is socially constructed, and the meaning we draw from whatever we encounter is essentially generated by ourselves.
Hence, the author proposed the following:
The human body is not simply a blank page upon which words have not yet been written. It is, more aptly, a textless text whose meaning is read by many readers, whether they are invited to read or not. It is a text which is almost always read from the outside, but which always has the potential to be read from the inside, in that the body-bearer may at any point choose to wrest control over the text to interpret it as his or her own, making unique meanings and giving them primacy of place.
something surprising or interesting learned
The two theories that formed the base for Culbertson’s thesis were interesting. Social constructionism and reader response theories are definitely something I can utilize in my paper concerning Conrad.
agree/disagree with the ideas and then apply this to a scene or example from the book (one not mentioned by the critic)
The two books I focused on, Lord Jim and Typhoon, involve male protagonists but also female foils that make their due appearance in the latter parts of the novels. The idea of the male body being a product of social construction (colonialist ideals, in particular) in conjunction with the reader response theory (the possibilities of mutation of meaning due to the rapidly expanding British Empire) could pose to hold some interesting insight into the Conradian male protagonists–Jim and Captain MacWhirr. The first article posed the following question: Are my Conradian novels involve some sort of biographical elements? This particular article posed this question: Were Lord Jim and Captain MacWhirr a product of the social context of Joseph Conrad? With Culbertson’s thesis, I have a beacon that will assist in this particular investigation.
Total of three pages analyzed
Culbertson, Philip. "DESIGNING MEN: READING THE MALE BODY AS TEXT." The Journal of the Society for Textual Reasoning 7 (1998). University of Virginia. Web.
Postcolonial Residue
summary of main arguments
This text explores the notion of postcolonialism in a literary context.
Language seems to be the most obvious of the colonial legacies, especially in countries over which the British Empire left its mark. This becomes evident when one considers the fact that a great amount of postcolonial literature has been written in English. Because language provided reality with the terms and the names of the world in which we live in, perhaps, the effects of language in a colonized country transcend the basic function of speech as communication and acquire a more cultural significance.
This significance placed on language raises the great debate: what should become of the English language in the former British Empire? Should it be rejected, embraced, or perhaps subverted? Does writing in English suggest the betrayal of the mother tongue or the assumption of a new post-colonial identity? Or has it evolved to fit the need of its speakers in the postcolonial world?
something surprising or interesting learned
The difficulty that arises in defining the term postcolonial stems from the implications of the actual word. In simple terms, postcolonialism means "after colonialism." This definition, however, seemed too restrictive, too limiting, for it implied only political independence and suggests that colonialism has completely ended. It does not take into account the continuing, far-reaching effects of colonialism.
agree/disagree with the ideas and then apply this to a scene or example from the book (one not mentioned by the critic)
I have to agree with this one. The Conradian sense of writing is a prime example of the postcolonialist reaction. Just look at Conrad’s writing–it’s not pretty at all. In a way, what makes Conrad so special is his insanely difficult writing style. However, this style may not be the product of not only his Polish origin but also his post colonist sentiment. Maybe the Conradian level of difficulty was a reaction to the enforcement of english among the natives.
Holla, Alaka. "Postcolonial Residue." Political Discourse–Theories of Colonialism and Postcolonialism (2008). Web. <http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/holla4.html>.