Kirjahaku

Conrad's great novel is a rich study not only of a typical South American country, but of the politics of any underdeveloped country, and for this reason it is permanently topical. Ian Watt addresses Conrad's concerns when writing the work, and provides an accessible introduction, taking account of background, history and politics, and reception and influence.

In their original versions, the ultimate fates of Faust, Don Quixote, and Don Juan reflect the anti-individuals of their time: Faust and Don Juan are punished in hellfire, and Don Quixote is mocked. A century later, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe embodies a more favourable consideration of the individual. Ian Watt examines these four myths of the modern world, all created in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, as distinctive products of a historically new society.