Overview
- The first book to focus on the complex relationships between inheritance, work, and desert in literature
- Uses the innovative approach of enlisting ideas in contemporary moral philosophy to illuminate Conrad’s works
- Links Conrad’s fiction to today’s debates on desert arising from work, inheritance, and meritocratic ideals
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
The book explores how Conrad’s fiction engaged with these changing modes of inheritance and work, and the resulting claims of desert they led to. Uniquely, it argues that Conrad’s fiction critiques claims of desert arising from both work and inheritance, while also vividly portraying the emotional costs and existential angst that these beliefs in desert entailed.
The argument speaks to and illuminates today’s debates on moral desert arising from work and inheritance, in particular from meritocratic ideals. Its new approach to Conrad’s works will appeal to students and scholars of Conrad and literary modernism, as well as a wider audience interested in philosophical and social debates on desert deriving from inheritance and work.
Reviews
"Chan’s familiarity with the relevant philosophers, literary critics, and – not least – Conrad’s texts, is extremely impressive. This is one of the best monographs I have read on Conrad’s fiction, and an original contribution to Conrad criticism."
--Jeremy Hawthorn, Emeritus Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Evelyn Tsz Yan Chan is Associate Professor in English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her publications include Virginia Woolf and the Professions (2014), The Humanities in Contemporary Chinese Contexts (2016, Springer; as a contributor and co-editor), and The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education: Perspectives from Hong Kong (2020, Springer; as primary author). She has also published numerous articles on Joseph Conrad. Her primary research and teaching interests are in literary representations of work and education, and in philosophical issues arising from such representations.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Work, Inheritance, and Deserts in Joseph Conrad’s Fiction
Authors: Evelyn Tsz Yan Chan
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2584-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-19-2583-2Published: 21 August 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-19-2586-3Published: 22 August 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-981-19-2584-9Published: 19 August 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 155
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Literature, general, Philosophy, general, Ethics, Sociology of Work