Tania Zulli, Joseph Conrad. Language and Transnationalism

Joseph Conrad’s literary and artistic prominence in the Englishcanon is solid and widely assessed, and it is no easy endeavour tonegotiate new perspectives on the author against a backdrop ofextensively consolidated critical readings. Yet, Tania Zulli’s newvolume achieves the compelling objective of providing the scientificcommunity with “[...] new flexible categories [...] to analyze [Conrad’s] position in contemporary critical debates on literary and non-disciplines” (p. 105). Such categories, as employed by the author in thiswide-ranging collection of essays, tap into the linguistic and discoursiverealm of Conradian textuality, addressing canonical literary critical milieux such as border crossing, cultural fluidity, migration, and exile.Zulli’s attentive observation of Conrad’s multilingualism, seen throughthe magnifying glass of the author’s biographical writings andthroughout an effective close-reading of his fictional work, allows thescholar to tackle the macrotext according to its transnational qualities.In Zulli’s words, since “the question of language interplay in Conrad’sfiction extends beyond the author’s multilingualism”, cosmopolitani-sm and cross-cultural themes can be surpassed “by focusing ontransnationalism understood as the capacity of [Conrad’s] writing totravel across nations” (p. 19).