Joseph Conrad and the ideology of fiction : a study of four works

Abstract

This dissertation argues the priority of politics in the interpretation of Conrad's fiction. It does so by establishing a critical dialogue with, and around, Fredric Jameson's Marxist classic, The Political Unconscious (1981). Jameson's proposition that Conrad's fiction is to be understood as a """"Political Unconscious"""" - that is, that Conrad's works produce political meanings in the same way that Freud suggested thwarted human instincts produce neuroses or psychopathologies - is put to the test here. This dissertaion seeks to extend the application of Jameson's hypothesis into some of the areas of Conrad's oeuvre that Jameson himself did not treat, or treated only briefly.