Joseph Conrad: 'The Secret Agent'

Cedric Watts

sept 2013 · Humanities-Ebooks LLP · Con narración por IA de Alistair (de Google)

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This critical and contextual study guide by a very distinguished critic of Modernist literature sheds new light on Conrad's topical novel of espionage and terrorism.

A biographical chapter relates The Secret Agent to Conrad's career. Next, the work's process of composition is discussed, and differences between the serial, the book version and the stage version are explained. An analysis of the plot gives particular attention to its ironic strategies and to the character of the narrator. Various themes and contexts are explored: conceptions of time and topography; anarchistic and Fenian politics; anti-Semitism; evolution, Lombroso and criminology. Literary influences and analogues are illustrated: Dickens, Zola, Ibsen, terrorist fiction. The characters are considered from various viewpoints. A critical survey summarises the work's reception since its first publication. The bibliography provides a guide to further reading.

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Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English at Sussex University, is author of the critical study, 'Thomas Hardy: “Jude the Obscure”' (London: Penguin, 1992), and has edited 'Jude the Obscure' for Broadview Press (Ontario, 1999). He has also published numerous works on Shakespeare, Keats, Conrad and Cunninghame Graham.