A Contrapuntal Reading of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim in the Light of Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism

Abstract

This article targets to converge in analyzing the novel Lord Jim and Said’s Culture and Imperialism to illustrate the critical development of the term ‘contrapuntal reading’ that demonstrates spatial rather than temporal relationship between them. This study deeply endeavors to present the relation between the colonized and colonizer as it is marked in Said’s Culture and Imperialism that demonstrates Conrad’s Lord Jim while it exposes the relationship of Jim and all other characters and the experiences of Jim that he gathers in his journey in the novel. In addition, this study scrutinizes the different aspects related with the term ‘contrapuntal reading’-colonialism, modernism and imperialism. However, qualitative approach has been applied to analyze the novel Lord Jim. As a consequence, this effort will pave the way to interpret the novel Lord Jim with an in-depth analysis that will lead the researchers to investigate other texts under the light of the term ‘contrapuntal reading’. More specifically this research paper investigates the inner incidents that took place in the novel Lord Jim in the light of Said’s Culture and Imperialism to establish various relationships as a contrapuntal reading study.