Writing in Between: Modernity and Psychological Dilemma in the Novels of Joseph Conrad

Beth Sharon Ash develops a theoretical framework for interpreting Conrad's signal texts and his situation as an author. Using object relations psychoanalysis, Ash reinserts into the literary conversation the idea of the psychologically inflected subject. She integrates authorial subjectivity within historical context, thus lending agency and density to the "relational subject" without neglecting the social forces which shape it. This book carefully positions Conrad as a writer caught "in between", as both a figure of alienation, critically disenchanted with British imperialism, and an orphan of genius desperately desiring a fit with his adopted culture. Through specific, often surprising readings of Conrad's novels and broad analysis of psychoanalytic and modernist criticism, Ash makes a significant theoretical contribution to theories of the subject.