Joseph Conrad: An Innovator in British Literature

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Joseph Conrad: An Innovator in British Literature

Joseph Conrad’s innovative literature is influenced by his experiences in traveling to foreign countries around the world. Conrad’s literature consists of the various styles of techniques he uses to display his well-recognized work as British literature. "His prose style, varying from eloquently sensuous to bare and astringent, keeps the reader in constant touch with a mature, truth-seeking, creative mind" (Hutchinson 1). Conrad’s novels are basically based on having both a psychological and sociological plot within them. This is why Conrad’s work carries its own uniqueness from other novels when being compared to his.

Examples of Conrad’s literature include novels such as Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and The Secret Agent. Heart of Darkness is basically based on his own experiences, but Conrad also adds fiction into this particular novel (Dintenfass 1). It has been said that Conrad’s style of writing is described as "...life as we actually live it...[is] to be blurred and messy and confusing-- and the abstract ideas...[of] actual experiences can sometimes produce in us, or in that part of us, anyway, which tries to understand the world in some rational way." Acquiring this from the novel gives the reader a psychological perspective in that they are receiving feedback in a conscious way such as a hallucination or a phantasm (Dintenfass 2). Readers have curiously questioned the purpose of his novels such as Heart of Darkness, but the answer is quite simple. "[The] purpose is to get the reader to re-live [any] experience in some [significant] and concrete way, with all its complexity and messiness, all its darkness and ambiguity, intact" (Dintenfass 3). An addi...

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...n, eds. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 1 Detroit: Hale Research Co., 1978.

Dintenfass, Mark. "Heart of Darkness: A Lawrence University Freshman Studies Lecture." 14 Mar. 1996.

*http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~csicseri/dintenfass.htm* (2 Feb. 2000).

Draper, James P., ed. World Literature Criticism: 1500 to the Present. Vol. 2 Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1992.

Hamblin, Stephen. "Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent." *http://www.ductape.net/~steveh/secretagent/* (2 Feb. 2000).

The Hutchinson Encyclopedia. 1999. 2 Feb. 1999. *http://ukdb.web.aol.com/hutchinson/encyclopedia/72/M0013572.htm

Magill, Frank N., ed. 1,300 Critical Evaluations of Selected Novels and Plays. Vol. 2 Englewood Cliffs: Salem Press Inc., 1976.

Stein, Rita, and Martin Tucker, eds. Modern British Literature. Vol. 4 New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1975.

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