Cognitive Conrad: Consciousness, Trauma, and the Rage for Order (Cognition, Poetics, and the Arts) - Hardcover

Ruppel, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 13: 9798216392354

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2026

Synopsis

Uncovers how Joseph Conrad's narratives reflect the cognitive studies of his day but also anticipate our own contemporary understandings of consciousness, trauma, and the human need for order. Cognitive Conrad demonstrates the interpretive power of cognitive literary studies and historicism in the most important works of Joseph Conrad. It highlights how Conrad's fiction reflects the complexities of human consciousness, trauma, and the relentless human drive to impose a coherent form on a world that, ultimately, lacks any dependable order independent of individual, human constructions. Through a detailed examination of Conrad's characters and their psychological landscapes – in a wide range of fiction, such as Lord Jim, Under Western Eyes, and various short stories – Richard J. Ruppel reveals how the novelist anticipated modern cognitive theories and the science of trauma. He also discusses the profound connections between Conrad's fiction and the work of 19th-century scientists like Hermann Helmholtz, who influenced Conrad's portrayal of perception and consciousness. Cognitive Conrad asserts the power of the arts and humanities to supplement and correct the sciences, which most often look to generalize and categorize. It argues that one key role of the arts – often articulated poignantly in Conrad’s greatest work – is to highlight the anomalous, to champion the peculiar.

About this title

About the Authors

Richard Ruppel is Professor of English and Peace and Justice Studies at Chapman University, USA. He is a past president of the Joseph Conrad Society and has published extensively on Conrad's work. His books include A Political Genealogy of Joseph Conrad (2016), Homosexuality in the Life and Work of Joseph Conrad (2008), and Imperial Desire: Dissident Sexualities and Colonial Literature (2003).

Alexander Bergs joined the Institute for English and American Studies of the University of Osnabrück, Germany, in 2006 when he became Full Professor and Chair of English Language and Linguistics. His research interests include, among others, language variation and change, constructional approaches to language, the role of context in language, the syntax/pragmatics interface and cognitive poetics. Alexander Bergs has taught at the Universities of Düsseldorf, Bonn, Santiago de Compostela, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Catania, Vigo and Thessaloniki and has organized numerous international workshops and conferences. Apart from several terms as Director of the Institute of English and American Studies, as Dean of the Faculty of Linguistics and Literatures, and as member of the University Senate, he is one of the founders and directors of the Research Cluster for Cognition and Poetics at the University of Osnabrück, Germany.

Margaret H. Freeman is Co-Director of the Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts, MA, USA. Professor Freeman's past publications include The Poem as Icon: A Study in Aesthetic Cognition (2020).

Peter Schneck is Professor (Chair) for American Literature and Culture at Osnabrück University, Germany.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798216392354
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 180