Seminar: Joseph Conrad and His World

This course locates the life and work of Joseph Conrad in its late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century context. A polyglot and cosmopolitan novelist whose works were massively serialized and translated during his lifetime, Conrad exerted a powerful influence upon how contemporary readers viewed the world even as his own extraordinary life and oeuvre were shaped by the global forces of nationalism, imperialism, revolutionary violence and new media. Students will study a selection of Conrad's major novels, shorter fiction, essays, and letters in relation to theoretical accounts of transnationalism, empire and race, global reception networks, and maritime space. Pre-1900, Seminar