Book contents
- Modernism and Finance Capital
- Modernism and Finance Capital
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I From Victorian Character to Modernist Professional
- Part II Finance Capital and the Economic and Cultural Turn toward London
- Part III Modernism, Affect, and the Rise of the Modern Corporation
- Chapter 7 Finance Capital and the Modern Corporation in Conrad’s Imperial Novels
- Chapter 8 The Affective Bloom-Space of Imagism
- Chapter 9 Literary Value and Affective Intensity in The Waste Land
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
Chapter 7 - Finance Capital and the Modern Corporation in Conrad’s Imperial Novels
from Part III - Modernism, Affect, and the Rise of the Modern Corporation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2024
- Modernism and Finance Capital
- Modernism and Finance Capital
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I From Victorian Character to Modernist Professional
- Part II Finance Capital and the Economic and Cultural Turn toward London
- Part III Modernism, Affect, and the Rise of the Modern Corporation
- Chapter 7 Finance Capital and the Modern Corporation in Conrad’s Imperial Novels
- Chapter 8 The Affective Bloom-Space of Imagism
- Chapter 9 Literary Value and Affective Intensity in The Waste Land
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Conrad’s novels engage in a critique of imperialism, but the precise nature of that critique persists as a source of debate among scholars. This chapter argues that three of Conrad’s novels – Lord Jim, Nostromo, and Victory – level an increasingly sharp critique at a system of capitalism and imperialism based on the modern corporation. In the novels, an opposition develops between an idealized British model of family-based capitalism and a corporate capitalism corrupted by investor ownership. In this dichotomy, the novels associate the family-based system of capitalism with the positivity of material value, meaning, character, and emotion that stands in contrast to the utter waste – the “nothing” of Victory’s end – left in the wake of an invisible and ever-changing network of social relations temporarily connected within the speculative structure of investor ownership and the new imperialism.
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- Modernism and Finance CapitalBritish Literature, 1870–1940, pp. 132 - 149Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024