Joseph Conrad and the Performing Arts

Katherine Isobel Baxter

May 2017 · Routledge

About this ebook

Conrad's fiction is characterized by an enduring recourse to the performing arts for metaphor, allegory, symbol, and subject matter; however, this aspect of Conrad's non-dramatic works has only recently begun to come into its own among literary critics. In response to this seminal moment, Joseph Conrad and the Performing Arts offers an exciting, interdisciplinary forum for one of the most interesting and nascent areas of Conrad studies. Adopting a variety of theoretical approaches, the contributors examine major and neglected works within the context of the performing arts: cultural performance in Conrad's Malay fiction; Conrad's use and parody of popular traditions such as melodrama, Grand-Guignol, and commedia dell'arte; Conrad's engagement with the visual culture of early cinema; Conrad's interest in the motifs of shadowgraphy (shadow plays); Conrad's relationship to Shakespeare; and the enduring influence of opera on his work. 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.

About the author

Katherine Isobel Baxter is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Northumbria University, UK, and Richard J. Hand is Professor of Theatre and Media Drama at the University of Glamorgan, Wales.