Katherine Isobel Baxter

In the first critical study wholly devoted to Joseph Conrad's use of techniques associated with the literary tradition of romance, Katherine Isobel Baxter argues that Conrad's engagement with the genre invigorated his work throughout his career. Exploring the ways in which Conrad borrows from, alludes to, and subverts the tropes of romance, Baxter suggests that Conrad's ambivalent relationship with popular forms like the adventure novel is revealed in the way he uses romance conventions to disrupt narrative expectations and make visible ethical problems with Europe's colonial project. Baxter examines not only familiar novels like Lord Jim but also less-studied works such as Romance and The Rover, using Robert Miles's model of the 'philosophical romance' to show that for Conrad, romance is also philosophically engaged with issues of ideology. Her study enables a new appreciation of the ways in which Conrad continued to experiment, even in his later fiction, and of the ethical import of that aesthetic experimentation.

Joseph Conrad and the Swan Song of Romance

Richard J. Hand

Offering an exciting forum for one of the most interesting and nascent areas of Conrad studies, this collection examines major and neglected works within the context of the performing arts, including popular theatrical traditions, early cinema, shadow plays, Shakespeare, and opera. Taken together, the essays provide, through solid scholarship and richly provocative speculation, new insight into Conrad's oeuvre, and invite future dialogue in the burgeoning field of Conrad and the performing arts.

Katherine Isobel Baxter

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