"Examining the notion of migration and transnationalism within the life and work of Joseph Conrad, this book situates the multicultural and transnational characters that comprise his fiction while locating Conrad as a subject of the Russian state whose provenance is Polish, but whose identity is that of a merchant sailor and English country gentleman. Conrad's characters are often marked by crossings ? changes of nation, changes of culture, changes of identity ? which refract Conrad's own cultural transitions. These crossings not only subjectivise the experience of the migrant through the modern complexities of technology and speed, but also through cross-cultural encounters of food and language. Collectively, these essays explore the experience of the migrant as exile; the inescapable intermeshing of migration, modernity and transnationalism as well as Conrad's own global and multicultural outlook. Conrad's work writes across historical, political and ethnic borders speaking to a transnational reality that continues to have relevance today."--

Examining the notion of migration and transnationalism within the life and work of Joseph Conrad, this book situates the multicultural and transnational characters that comprise his fiction while locating Conrad as a subject of the Russian state whose provenance is Polish, but whose identity is that of a merchant sailor and English country gentleman. Conrad's characters are often marked by crossings – changes of nation, changes of culture, changes of identity – which refract Conrad's own cultural transitions. These crossings not only subjectivise the experience of the migrant through the modern complexities of technology and speed, but also through cross-cultural encounters of food and language. Collectively, these essays explore the experience of the migrant as exile; the inescapable intermeshing of migration, modernity and transnationalism as well as Conrad's own global and multicultural outlook. Conrad's work writes across historical, political and ethnic borders speaking to a transnational reality that continues to have relevance today.

In 1908, Joseph Conrad was criticised by a reviewer for being a man ‘without either country or language’: even his shipboard communities were the product of a ‘cosmopolitan’ vision. This book takes off from that criticism and begins by exploring the history and meanings of the term ‘cosmopolitan’. It then considers the multinational world of Conrad’s ships – and of the Merchant Marine more generally – to differentiate multinationalism from cosmopolitanism. Subsequent chapters then address nationalism, nation-formation and the concept of the nation through a reading of Nostromo; cosmopolitanism and internationalism in The Secret Agent; nationalism, internationalism and transnational activism in relation to Under Westen Eyes; and Conrad’s own transnational activism in his later essays. While drawing distinctions between cosmopolitanism, internationalism and transnationalism as the appropriate conceptual framings for Conrad’s works, this book traces Conrad’s own engagement with nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and transnational activism in relation to the political events of his time.

The K-Effect shows how the roman alphabet has functioned as a standardizing global model for modern print culture. Investigating the history and ongoing effects of romanization, Christopher GoGwilt reads modernism in a global and comparative perspective, through the works of Joseph Conrad and others. The book explores the ambiguous effect of romanized transliteration both in the service of colonization and as an instrument of decolonization. This simultaneously standardizing and destabilizing effect is abbreviated in the way the letter K indexes changing hierarchies in the relation between languages and scripts. The book traces this K-effect through the linguistic work of transliteration and its aesthetic organization in transnational modernism. The book examines a variety of different cases of romanization: the historical shift from Arabic script to romanized print form in writing Malay; the politicization of language and script reforms across Russia and Central Europe; the role of Chinese debates about romanization in shaping global transformations in print media; and the place of romanization between ancient Sanskrit models of language and script and contemporary digital forms of coding. Each case study develops an analysis of Conrad’s fiction read in comparison with such other writers as James Joyce, Lu Xun, Franz Kafka, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The first sustained cultural study of romanization, The K-Effect proposes an important new way to assess the multi-lingual and multi-script coordinates of modern print culture.

The Routledge Companion to Joseph Conrad attests to the global significance and enduring importance of Conrad’s works, reception, and legacy. This volume brings together an international roster of scholars who consider his works in relation to biography, narrative, politics, women’s studies, comparative literature, and other forms of art. They offer approaches as diverse as re-examining Conrad’s sea voyages using newly available digital materials, analyzing his archipelagic narrative techniques, applying Chinese philosophy to Lord Jim, interrogating gendered epistemology in the neglected story “The Tale,” considering Conrad alongside W.E.B. Du Bois, Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, or Orhan Pamuk, or alongside sound, gesture, opera, graphic novels, or contemporary events. An invaluable resource for students and scholars of Conrad and twentieth-century literature, this groundbreaking collection shows how Conrad’s works – their artistry, vision, and ideas – continue to challenge, perplex, and delight.

A diverse and multinational volume, this book showcases the passages of Joseph Conrad's narratives across geographical and disciplinary boundaries, focusing on the transtextual and transcultural elements of his fiction. Featuring contributions from distinguished and emergent Conrad scholars, it unpacks the transformative meanings which Conrad's narratives have achieved in crossing national, cultural and disciplinary boundaries. Featuring studies on the reception of Conrad in modern China, an exploration of Conrad's relationship with India, a comparative study of the hybrid art of Conrad and Salman Rushdie, and the responses of Conrad's narratives to alternative media forms, this volume brings out transtextual relations among Conrad's works and various media forms, world narratives, philosophies, and emergent modes of critical inquiry. Gathering essays by contributors from Canada, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Norway, Poland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this volume constitutes an inclusive, transnational networking of emergent border-crossing scholarship.

Most studies on transnational migration either stress assimilation, circulatory migration, or the negative impact of migration. This remarkable study, which covers migrants from one Jordanian village to 17 different countries in Europe, Asia, and North America, emphasizes the resiliency of transnational migrants after long periods of absence, social encapsulation, and stress, and their ability to construct social networks and reinterpret traditions in such a way as to mix the old and the new in a scenario that incorporates both worlds. Focusing on the humanistic aspects of the migration experience, this book examines questions such as birth control, women’s work, retention of tribal law, and the changing attitudes of migrants towards themselves, their families, their home communities, and their nation. It ends with placing transnational migration from Jordan in a cross-cultural perspective by comparing it with similar processes elsewhere, and critically reviews a number of theoretical perspectives that have been used to explain migration.