Conradian contracts
Subtitle: exchange and identity in the immigrant imagination
By: Tamás Juhász
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Lanham, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 219
ISBN-13: 9780739145531; 9780739145555
Subjects: Social contract in literature; Immigrants in literature; Commerce in literature; Psychoanalysis and literature; Displacement (Psychology) in literature; Criticism and interpretation; Identity (Psychology) in literature
Description: "The book presents a plausible, carefull reasoned, well-illustrated thesis explaining how displaced characters in Conrad's works seek communal recognition, psychological security, companionship, love, and honor through economic transactions even though their efforts are rewarded only on a conditional basis. To support this thesis, the author calls upon a wide range of theorists, including Marcel Mauss, Claude Levi-Strauss, Karl Polanyi, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Wieslaw Krajka."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Commerce and return in Almayer's folly; title: "Trans-ports of love": exchange as practice and narrative; title: Never keeping to oneself: a total social fact in "Typhoon" and "The secret sharer"; title: Paternal discourse and contractual revision in Under western eyes; title: "The duel": rules and reciprocities, or blows for sheer love; title: A "supreme illusion": acts of recognition in The secret agent; title: Trade, meaning and the prospects of self-transformation in Lord Jim; title: The end of potlatching: gift and prestige in Nostromo; title: Sympathy, generosity and the business of womanhood in Chance; title: Conclusions and words after Conrad's.