Papers by William Atkinson
The Conradian, 2022
STILL PLAUSIBLE ACCOUNT OF THE eighteenth-century European Enlightenment reads reason substitutin... more STILL PLAUSIBLE ACCOUNT OF THE eighteenth-century European Enlightenment reads reason substituting for faith. Reason would provide access to a value system that would be, self-evidently, valid in all times and all places without recourse to divine revelation. Over the course of the nineteenth century, that same reason enabled the technological developments that created the material improvement that came to be thought of as progress. Thus, intellectually and materially, humanity's position at the centre of things became ever more obvious and secure. Theocentrism was replaced by anthropocentrism. In the face of evolutionary theory, some came to feel abandoned, stranded alone on the beach as the tide of faith receded. Such depression is still entirely anthropocentric: without God, Man is now alone in the universe, as if nothing other than humankind is of ethical significance. This aloneness is massively expanded by the conviction that only human beings are aware of it. If, as Heidegger and others argue, humans are absolutely distinct in being aware of their own death, they are surely equally distinguished in being aware of the death of God. Whether self-satisfied and confident or angst-ridden, human beings regard themselves as exceptional, as sui generis. Being exceptional requires that there be exceptions. Anthropocentrism is predicated upon excepting the Other in order to maintain humanity in its glorious isolation. Valuing reason above all else, the Enlightenment was in principle well-disposed towards any creature that displayed reason. The nineteenth century was a darker period during which the Animal with Reason became increasingly circumscribed: eventually, he was reduced to being a white male of élite class. In effect, he still is in the Euro-American world. 1 A system of clear differentiation is key. There must at all times be ways of distinguishing white from non-white, male from non-male, hu
Conradiana, 2016
Samuel Beckett wrote of a rupture in communication between subject and object, as a result of whi... more Samuel Beckett wrote of a rupture in communication between subject and object, as a result of which what are called inside and outside are one and the same. Emile Benveniste's analysis of shifter pronouns shows how in writing "I" the subject is first constituted and then fades into its own irrecoverable object. Thus, the subject is separated from itself. According to Giorgio Agamben, such subjective disjunction is often a trauma. This essay will consider Lord Jim with Beckett's Molloy and The Unnamable, showing why, like Beckett's protagonists, neither Jim nor Marlow can ever recuperate the subject to itself.
Migration, Modernity and Transnationalism in the Work of Joseph Conrad, 2021
Tales of Unrest Allan H. Simmons and J. H. Stape, eds. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jose... more Tales of Unrest Allan H. Simmons and J. H. Stape, eds. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad, J. H. Stape and Allan H. Simmons, general eds. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012. 376 pp.Tales of Unrest, Conrad's fourth volume of fiction, was first published in the spring of 1898, by Charles Scribner's Sons in the United States (March 25) and in Britain by Unwin, eight days later. The collection is now published again in the magisterial Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad, edited by Allan H. Simmons and J. H. Stape, who are also the General Editors of the series. The edition is all that might be expected from scholars of such experience and under the imprint of such an august press. The Introduction is a fine piece of scholarship: clear, informative, and likely to stimulate new lines of inquiry. Following the stories themselves, comes the "The Texts: An Essay." Such essays are always a hard sell to any but the most devoted of textualists; for the ...
Twentieth Century Literature, 2004
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears... more Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
Twentieth Century Literature, 1991
... Lawrence and Eliot WILLIAM ATKINSON While Joseph Conrad's name is forever linked with Af... more ... Lawrence and Eliot WILLIAM ATKINSON While Joseph Conrad's name is forever linked with Africa, DH Lawrence and TS Eliot are less readily associated with that theater of European imperialism. ... Vivas, Eliseo. DH Lawrence: The Failure and the Triumph of Art. ...
The Conradian, 2018
At the time of Heart of Darkness's first publication, the horror of Leopold's Congo regime became... more At the time of Heart of Darkness's first publication, the horror of Leopold's Congo regime became the background knowledge from which readers understood the text. That particular horror is no longer part of a reader's knowledge base, but nor is the terrible reality of contemporary post-colonial central Africa, a reality that should be as much part of what a reader brings to Heart of Darkness today as were the accounts made public by the Congo Reform Association more than a century ago.
The second in a series of papers on animals in Conrad.
The Conradian, 38.2 (Autumn 2013), 2013
"The Tale," a story about submarine hunting, was first published in The Strand Magazine in 1917, ... more "The Tale," a story about submarine hunting, was first published in The Strand Magazine in 1917, at the height of the U-Boat war. This paper shows how the other material in this issue of the Strand and elsewhere would encourage the almost paranoid suspicion evinced by Conrad's protagonist.
Twentieth Century Literature, 2004
This is the first of three exercises in textual ecology. "The Heart of Darkness" was first publis... more This is the first of three exercises in textual ecology. "The Heart of Darkness" was first published in three issues of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. If we read Conrad's story as part of a larger text--Blackwood's, how different will it look?
The Conradian, 35.1 (Spring 2010)
Dying, like any other rite of passage, has its conventions, and scholars of dying talk the "good ... more Dying, like any other rite of passage, has its conventions, and scholars of dying talk the "good death." To what extent does Kurtz's death in Heart of Darkness fulfill the nineteenth-century death script?
World Literature Today, 2006
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 198.86.8.2 on Wed, 27 Aug 2014 01:38:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
College Literature, 2003
Japanese culture has a somewhat different attitude toward wrapping. A discussion of some of Taniz... more Japanese culture has a somewhat different attitude toward wrapping. A discussion of some of Tanizaki's short stories in the light of these attitudes.
Twelve of Conrad's short stories, edited and with an introduction by William Atkinson
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Papers by William Atkinson