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Artful dodges in mental territory: self-deception in Conrad's fiction.(Joseph Conrad)(Critical essay)

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From: Conradiana
Date: 20050922
Author:Hawthorn, Jeremy

I. EXPLORING THE SELF

In his 1905 essay "The Fine Art," Joseph Conrad meditates on the human propensity to engage in self-deception: "Men, professors or coal-heavers, are easily deceived; they even have an extraordinary knack of lending themselves to deception, a sort of curious and inexplicable propensity to allow themselves to be led by the nose with their eyes open" (28). Conrad's formulation is interesting on a number of counts. First, it is based on what we can call a territorial model, one that relates the process to that of moving across a physical space. Second, it ...

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