Butterfly and Bulkhead: Chance, Control, Conrad

  • Randall Stevenson University of Edinburgh

Abstract


"What a chance missed! My God! What a chance missed"
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

Jim's lament has intriguing implications for issues of chance and control in literature, perhaps also for literary history, and certainly for the act of reading itself. This article will explore such implications, from the obivous 'moral identity' of Jim himself to the complex way in which imagination incessantly and ingeniously strives to impose its orders and controls on experience.

Author Biography

Randall Stevenson, University of Edinburgh
Randall Stevenson is Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, English Literature Department. His research interests are centred on twentieth-century literature, and on the historical processes and pressures of modernity which shape it.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2218/forum.03.571
Published
12-Dec-2006
How to Cite
Stevenson, Randall. 2006. “Butterfly and Bulkhead: Chance, Control, Conrad”. FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & The Arts, no. 03 (December). https://doi.org/10.2218/forum.03.571.
Issue
No 03 (2006): Chance and Control
Section
Guest Contributions

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