1st Edition
Conrad and Nature Essays
Conrad and Nature is the first collection of critical essays examining nature and the environment in Joseph Conrad’s writings. Together, these essays by established and emerging scholars reveal both the crucial importance of nature in Conrad’s work, and the vital, ongoing relevance of Conrad’s treatment of the environment in our era of globalization and climate change. No richer subject matter for an environmentally-engaged criticism can be found than the Conradian contexts and themes under investigation in this volume: island cultures, colonial occupations, storms at sea, mining and extraction, inconstant weather, ecological collapse, and human communities competing for resources. The 17 essays collected here —13 new essays, and 4 excerpts from classic works of Conradian scholarship -- consolidate some of the most important voices and perspectives on Conrad’s relation to the natural world, and open new avenues for Conradian and environmental scholarship in the 21st century.
1 Conrad, Nature, and Environmental Criticism
LISSA SCHNEIDER-REBOZO AND JEFFREY MATHES MCCARTHY
PART I
Conrad and the Anthropocene
2 Wilderness After Nature: Conrad, Empire, and the Anthropocene
JESSE OAK TAYLOR
3 Conrad in the Anthropocene: Steps to an Ecology of Catastrophe
NIDESH LAWTOO
4 The Monstrous and the Secure: Reading Conrad in the Anthropocene
ROBERT P. MARZEC
PART II
Conrad’s Atmospherics
5 Dirty Weather
TROY BOONE
6 The "Breaking-up" of the Monsoon and Lord Jim’s Atmospherics
BRENDAN KAVANAGH
7 Conrad’s Ecological Performativity: The Scenography of "Nature" from An Outcast of the Islands to Lord Jim
MARK DEGGAN
PART III
Conrad, Ethics, and Ecology
8 Conrad and Nature, 1900 - 1904
HUGH EPSTEIN
9 "A Paradise of Snakes": Conrad’s Ecological Ambivalence
J.A. BERNSTEIN
10 ‘What could his object be?’ Form and Materiality in Conrad’s ‘The Tale’
JARICA LINN WATTS
PART IV
Nature, Empire and Commerce
11 Nostromo and World Ecology
JAY PARKER
12 "He Can’t Throw Any of His Coal-Dust in My Eyes": Adventurers and Entrepreneurs in Victory’s Coal Empire
SAMUEL PERKS
13 Guano, Globalization and Ecosystem Change in Lord Jim
MARK D. LARABEE
PART V
Earlier Commentary
14 From The Challenge of Bewilderment
PAUL ARMSTRONG
15 "Too Beautiful Altogether": Ideologies of Gender and Empire in Heart of Darkness
JOHANNA M. SMITH
16 From "Beyond Mastery: The Future of Conrad’s Beginnings"
GEOFFREY GALT HARPHAM
17 Solidarity in The Nigger of the "Narcissus": The World of Nature
IAN WATT
Notes on Contributors
Index
Biography
Lissa Schneider-Rebozo is Professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Research at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.
Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy is the Director of Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah.
John G. Peters is University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas, is past President of the Joseph Conrad Society of America and current General Editor of Conradiana.
"Joseph Conrad is a corner-stone for understanding modern literature and the human condition, and Conrad and Nature: Essays, both dramatically reshapes our understanding of his work in his contemporary world, and his legacy and importance in ours."
-- David Mulry, College of Coastal Georgia
