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9780801441615

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David Adams tests fiction with theory and theory with fiction, all the while placing his discussion of modernist anxieties in significant historical and political contexts. The persistence of metaphysical questions in an era so profoundly mistrustful of metaphysical answers is one of the most fruitful ironies Adams explores in his book. Hans Blumenberg's anthropological perspective and concept of 'reoccupation' allow Adams to trace cultural continuities where other critics have found radical breaks. --Karen Lawrence, author of Penelope Voyages: Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition Adams, of course, is not unique in recognizing a sense of weariness and despair in Nostromo, but his explanation for it is, and so is his discussion of Conrad's philosophy in relation to that of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, and even Slavoj Zizek. --Twentieth-Century Literature Adams provides a good account of how such modernist fiction differs from popular Victorian novels of empire, which lack a similar tension between realism and symbolism. Though thematic concerns predominate. Conrad's language receives considerable attention, as do Woolf's travels to Greece and study of its ancient language.... Besides critics and scholars of literature, philosophers, and theologians will find this study rewarding.... Recommended. --Choice Adam's book is particularly ambitious because it effectively fuses two projects: in addition to an analysis of the British modernists' representations of colonial exploration, it also places these same fictions... within the tradition of the classical epic journey.... Adam's dual focus, which keeps in its sights both the classical literary tradition and the global political scene, does not in the least blur his vision, but indeed allows him to look beyond familiar assessments of both travel writing's cultural function and of modernism's Greco-Roman turn. --Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature Colonial Odysseys makes a genuine and welcome contribution to the study of modernism and colonial history. --Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

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David Adams is Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University at Lima.

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