Athanasius A Ayuk. Joseph Conrad's Tragic Moral Paradoxes. L'Harmattan Cameroun, 2013.
"In this book, Ayuk raises issues of existential concerns in Conrad’s major fiction. In an age in which science and technology soared with success, it produced as its antithesis a tragic and complex humanity which this book clearly and coherently examines. Through close textual analysis, Ayuk seeks to bring out Conrad’s paradoxes in his portrayal of human experience: the struggle between individual ego and societal mores, guilt and conscience and loyalty betrayed. Joseph Conrad’s Tragic Moral Paradoxes considers Conrad’s moral and philosophical vision of humanity in the early 20th century but also the psycho-complexity of human experience of our day."
Vinaybhushan V. Deshmukhe. Fictional World of Joseph Conrad. Authorspress, 2013.
Wieslaw Krajka. From Szlachta Culture to the 21st Century, Between East and West: New Essays on Joseph Conrad's Polishness. East European Monographs, 2013.
"The volume opens with an appreciation of Conrad's Polishness by Jerzy Buzek, The President of the European Parliament. Its first section attempts to provide new illuminations of Polishness in Conrad's personality and oeuvre: from the szlachta cultural heritage of his ancestors and Polish contextualizations of 'Prince Roman' through some aspects of the writer's identity and references to Polish culture and autobiographical elements in his works to their Polish translations and reception. The Eastern-Western frame for these studies is provided by some relations of his literary works to Russian literature (Dostoevsky, Turgenev) and their reception in Ukraine and Germany. The essays represent various methodological approaches to studies in biography, historical-cultural contextualizations of literature, fact-and-fiction relationships, history of ideas, literary reception (documented surveys, translative and creative reception) and comparative literary criticism."
Wieslaw Krajka. Wine in Old and New Bottles: Critical Paradigms for Joseph Conrad. Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Press, 2013.
"This volume presents a collection of traditional and modern critical approaches to Joseph Conrad's oeuvre, ranging from biographical and autobiographical studies to literary comparisons with John Milton, Herman Melville, James Joyce, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Cormac McCarthy; from postcolonial and Marxist analyses to reader-response, intertextual, and archetypal criticism. Some pieces incorporate the theoretical-philosophical insights of Josiah Royce, Sigmund Freud, and Jacques Lacan; others consult Jacques Derrida, Homi Bhabha, and Slavoj Zizek. Apart from Conrad's life and its reflection in his writings, these essays consider such thematics as the critique of reality; nationalism; imperial evil; racism; landscape and truth; impressionism; psychological archetypes; doubling and defamiliarization; alienation and selfhood; the uncanny; imaginary identification and the real; ideology as specter; unconditional hospitality; the theory of whirling and veering; and academic teachings of Conrad, both their past character and future possibilities."
John G. Peters. Joseph Conrad’s Critical Reception. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
"Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Joseph Conrad's novels and short stories have consistently figured into--and helped to define--the dominant trends in literary criticism. This book is the first to provide a thorough yet accessible overview of Conrad scholarship and criticism spanning the entire history of Conrad studies, from the 1895 publication of his first book, Almayer's Folly, to the present. While tracing the general evolution of the commentary surrounding Conrad's work, Peters also evaluates Conrad's impact on critical trends such as the belles lettres tradition, the New Criticism, psychoanalysis, structuralist and post-structuralist criticism, narratology, postcolonial studies, gender and women's studies, and ecocriticism."
Mohammad El Sayed. Anomie in Joseph Conrad's Early Fiction. Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2013.
"The main objective of this book is to explore the concept of anomie in selected works by Joseph Conrad guided by Robert Merton's theory of anomie. The book focuses on Conrad's often neglected early fiction. The first part of the book discusses anomie as a lack of balance between the cultural goals of individuals and the institutional means set by society. The second part shows how far anomie can lead to the downfall of individuals as well as the destruction of societies. By doing so, the book aims to show that Conrad, though implicitly, directs the attention of his readers to positively examine the oppressive social norms that may lead to anomie. Both case studies present reasonable solutions that can modify the oppressive social elements that cause man's suffering in life. An understanding of these elements is an attempt to evade an inevitable clash between man and his society."
