Joseph Conrad约瑟夫康拉德的英文介绍

Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad(3 December 1857 –3 August 1924)was a Polish-born English novelist who today is most famous for Heart of Darkness, his fictionalized account of Colonial Africa. “He was granted British nationality in 1886, but always considered himself a Pole. Conrad is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties and he always spoke with a marked accent. ”He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, describing trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe. He was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. He has been praised as one of the most powerful, insightful, and disturbing novelists in the English canon despite coming to English later in life, which allowed him to combine it with the sensibilities of French, Russian, and Polish literature.LIFE AND CAREERJoseph Conrad was born on December 3, 1857, in Berdyczew, Poland. His father was a writer and a translator of the works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616). He was also a member of a movement seeking Polish independence from Russia. In 1862 the family was forced to move to Russia because of his father's political activities. Conrad's mother died three years later in 1865. It was not until 1867 that Conrad and his father were allowed to return to Poland. In 1868 Conrad attended high school in the Austrian province of Galicia for one year. The following year he and his father moved to Cracow, Poland, where his father died in 1869. In the time spent with his father, Conrad became a lover of literature, especially tales of the sea. After his father's death, his uncle, Thaddus Bobrowski, took Conrad in and raised him. In the autumn of 1874 Conrad went to Marseilles, France, where he entered the French marine service. For the next twenty years Conrad led a successful career as a ship's officer. In June 1878 Conrad went to England for the first time. He worked as a seaman on English ships, and in 1880 he began his career as an officer in the British merchant service, rising from third mate to master. His voyages took him to distant and exotic places such as Australia, India, Singapore, Java, and Borneo, which would provide the background for much of his fiction. In 1886 he became a British citizen. He received his first command in 1888. In 1890 he traveled to the Belgian Congo, Zaire, and Africa, which inspired his great short novel The Heart of Darkness. In 1893 he discussed his work in progress, the novel Almayer's Folly, with a passenger, the novelist John Galsworthy (1867–1933). A year later he retired from the merchant marines and completed Almayer's Folly, which was published in 1895. In 1896 he married Jessie George, an Englishwoman. Two years later, they settled in Kent in the south of England, where Conrad lived for the rest of his life.From 1896 through 1904 Conrad wrote novels about places he visited as a merchant marine and he explored themes such as the uncertainties of human sympathy. His early novels included An Outcast of the Islands(1896), The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897), The Heart of Darkness (1899), and Lord Jim (1900). The nextthree novels reflected Conrad's political side, including Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911). Although Conrad's last novels, The Shadow Line (1917) and The Rover (1923), were written as a farewell, he received many honors. In 1923 he visited the United States to great fanfare. The year after, he declined an offer of knighthood in England.On August 3, 1924, Conrad died of a heart attack and was buried at Canterbury, England. His gravestone bears these lines from Edmund Spenser (1552–1599): "Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,/ Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please."Joseph Conrad began writing in 1889. In total, he wrote 13 novels, 28 short stories and 2 memories.Almayer’s Folly(1895) was Conrad‟s first published novel. It is set towards the end of the 19th century in the Malay Archipelago and deals with the conflicts between European colonialism and the native population. Dreams of easy wealth drive the Dutch trader Kaspar Almayer into grandiose schemes which come to nothing. His mixed-race wife despises him and is having an affair with a local native war lord. He completely misjudges the turmoil of events in which he becomes enmeshed and eventually descends into opium addiction and self-destruction. The novel contains many stereotypes of nineteenth century imperialist ideology, but its events are related in a manner which would lead to the development of literary modernism in the 20th century.Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad‟s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects –cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship‟s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.Heart of Darkness(1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has …gone too far‟ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the …horrors‟ of what happen ed when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad‟s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain.Nostromo(1904) is Conrad‟s …big‟ political novel – into which he packs all of his major subjects and themes. It is set in the imaginary Latin-American country of Costaguana –and features a stolen hoard of silver, desperate acts of courage, characters trembling on the brink of moral panic. The political background encompasses nationalist revolution and the Imperialism of foreign intervention. Silveris the pivot of the whole story – revealing the courage of some and the corruption and destruction of others. Conrad‟s narration is as usual complex and oblique. He begin s half way through the events of the revolution, and proceeds by way of flashbacks and glimpses into the future.1.Much of his writing bears a profound philosophical quality, exploring the depthsof psychology, morality, the creative impulse, and other pillars of existence.2.Most of his novels and stories have a seaboard setting.3.While some of his works have a strain of Romanticism, he is viewed as aprecursor of Modernism literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors.4.Conrad concludes with a beautiful metaphor that captures the essence of art asboth construct and contextReferences1./Co-Da/Conrad-Joseph.html2./2009/09/17/joseph-conrad-his-greatest-works/3./wiki/Joseph_Conrad。