Conrad and Nature Essays Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature Series

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.

1 Conrad, Nature, and Environmental Criticism

LISSA SCHNEIDER-REBOZO AND JEFFREY MATHES MCCARTHY

PART I

Conrad and the Anthropocene

2 Wilderness After Nature: Conrad, Empire, and the Anthropocene

JESSE OAK TAYLOR

3 Conrad in the Anthropocene: Steps to an Ecology of Catastrophe

NIDESH LAWTOO

4 The Monstrous and the Secure: Reading Conrad in the Anthropocene

ROBERT P. MARZEC

PART II

Conrad’s Atmospherics

5 Dirty Weather

TROY BOONE

6 The "Breaking-up" of the Monsoon and Lord Jim’s Atmospherics

BRENDAN KAVANAGH

7 Conrad’s Ecological Performativity: The Scenography of "Nature" from An Outcast of the Islands to Lord Jim

MARK DEGGAN

PART III

Conrad, Ethics, and Ecology

8 Conrad and Nature, 1900 - 1904

HUGH EPSTEIN

9 "A Paradise of Snakes": Conrad’s Ecological Ambivalence

J.A. BERNSTEIN

10 ‘What could his object be?’ Form and Materiality in Conrad’s ‘The Tale’

JARICA LINN WATTS

PART IV

Nature, Empire and Commerce

11 Nostromo and World Ecology

JAY PARKER

12 "He Can’t Throw Any of His Coal-Dust in My Eyes": Adventurers and Entrepreneurs in Victory’s Coal Empire

SAMUEL PERKS

13 Guano, Globalization and Ecosystem Change in Lord Jim

MARK D. LARABEE

PART V

Earlier Commentary

14 From The Challenge of Bewilderment

PAUL ARMSTRONG

15 "Too Beautiful Altogether": Ideologies of Gender and Empire in Heart of Darkness

JOHANNA M. SMITH

16 From "Beyond Mastery: The Future of Conrad’s Beginnings"

GEOFFREY GALT HARPHAM

17 Solidarity in The Nigger of the "Narcissus": The World of Nature

IAN WATT

Notes on Contributors

Index

Lissa Schneider-Rebozo is Professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Research at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy is the Director of Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah.

John G. Peters is University Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas, is past President of the Joseph Conrad Society of America and current General Editor of Conradiana.