From Szlachta Culture to the XXI Century, Between East and West - (Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives) by Wieslaw Krajka (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The volume opens with an appreciation of Conrad's Polishness by Jerzy Buzek, The President of the European Parliament. Its first section provides new illuminations of Polishness in Conrad's personality and oeuvre: from the szlachta cultural heritage of his ancestors and Polish contextualizations of "Prince Roman" through some aspects of the writer's identity and references to Polish culture and autobiographical elements in his works to their Polish translations and reception. The Eastern-Western frame for these studies is provided by insights into some relations of his literary works to Russian literature (Dostoevsky, Turgenev) and their reception in Ukraine and Germany. The essays represent various methodological approaches to studies in biography, historical-cultural contextualizations of literature, fact-and-fiction relationships, history of ideas, literary reception (documented surveys, translative and creative reception) and comparative literary criticism.

Review Quotes

Another exciting contribution to Conrad Studies, providing a powerful analysis of Polish and East Central European contexts in Conrad's biography, together with interpretation of archival sources, studies in literary history, comparative literary criticism, and the reception of Conrad's works in Poland, Ukraine, and Germany, by scholars from Europe and elsewhere.-- "Modern Language Review"

About the Author

Is profesor emeritus at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. He is the author of Isolation and Ethos: A Study of Joseph Conrad (1992) and editor of Various Dimensions of the Other in Joseph Conrad's Fiction (2020), Some Intertextual Chords of Joseph Conrad's Literary Art (2019), Joseph Conrad's Authorial Self. Polish and Other (2018), among others, and the editor of the series Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives.