Critical Readings of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim

Abstract

There are much scholarly readings of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. This paper randomly picks some of the papers according to the various ways the scholars have studied the text for a review. Such critical readings have been examined here, considering the topical, thematic as well as theoretical and conceptual frameworks that have guided the studies. By so doing the paper answers the question on ways through which Lord Jim is read. The paper therefore shows that source study, reader response investigation, aesthetics analysis, modernist view, postcolonial readings, religious and moral approaches, stylistics, queer reading and other heterologous readings have dominated the scholarly works on Lord Jim. The conclusion is that these readings have assumed Lord Jim offers codes for interpreting society or life. Thus, most of the critics read the text as philosophy, while others read the texts as allegory or a testimony of the author or his society. But such interpretations have often offered a less clear view about the texts and as a result, many accuse the author of being obscured.  However, few studies have approached the text as an art. The study remains important as it draws together many of these readings that have differently treated Lord Jim (literature) both as ideology, discourse, and art.