ABSTRACT

The co-winner of 2022 Adam Gillon Book Award in Conrad Studies, Conrad and Nature is the first collection of critical essays examining nature and the environment in Joseph Conrad’s writings. Together, these essays by established and emerging scholars reveal both the crucial importance of nature in Conrad’s work, and the vital, ongoing relevance of Conrad’s treatment of the environment in our era of globalization and climate change. No richer subject matter for an environmentally-engaged criticism can be found than the Conradian contexts and themes under investigation in this volume: island cultures, colonial occupations, storms at sea, mining and extraction, inconstant weather, ecological collapse, and human communities competing for resources. The 17 essays collected here —13 new essays, and 4 excerpts from classic works of Conradian scholarship -- consolidate some of the most important voices and perspectives on Conrad’s relation to the natural world, and open new avenues for Conradian and environmental scholarship in the 21st century.

part I|24 pages

Conrad and the Anthropocene

chapter 2|24 pages

Wilderness after Nature

Conrad, Empire and The Anthropocene

chapter 3|25 pages

Conrad in the Anthropocene

Steps to an Ecology of Catastrophe

chapter 4|22 pages

The Monstrous and the Secure

Reading Conrad in the Anthropocene

part II|22 pages

Conrad’s Atmospherics

chapter 5|22 pages

Dirty Weather

chapter 7|24 pages

Conrad’s Ecological Performativity

The Scenography of “Nature” from An Outcast of the Islands to Lord Jim

part III|25 pages

Conrad, Ethics and Ecology

chapter 8|25 pages

Conrad and Nature, 1900–1904

chapter 9|15 pages

“A Paradise of Snakes”

Conrad’s Ecological Ambivalence

part IV|19 pages

Nature, Empire and Commerce

chapter 11|19 pages

Nostromo and World-Ecology

chapter 12|17 pages

“He Can’t Throw Any of His Coal-Dust in My Eyes”

Adventurers and Entrepreneurs in Victory’s Coal Empire

part V|5 pages

Earlier Commentary

chapter 15|7 pages

“Too Beautiful Altogether”

Ideologies of Gender and Empire in Heart of Darkness 1

chapter 16|12 pages

From “Beyond Mastery

The Future of Conrad’s Beginnings” 1

chapter 17|7 pages

The World of Nature 1