Conrad Panel at MLA Convention Chicago (USA) 3-6 January 2019

Conrad’s Politics of Hope

In the spirit of recent challenges to the hermeneutics of suspicion, we invite papers that take the idealism in Conrad’s writing seriously. The law of unintended consequences rules Conrad’s fiction, and characters who voice idealistic aspirations usually fail to achieve them, but does the failure of idealism necessarily discredit it? Does Conrad imagine alternatives to the hypocrisy, selfishness, and materialism he portrays? Does he balance critique with hope?