The Dutch writer Louis Couperus published De Stille Kracht (The Hidden Force), his classic portrait of life in the Dutch East Indies, within a year of the first publication of Joseph Conrad’s Heart...Show moreThe Dutch writer Louis Couperus published De Stille Kracht (The Hidden Force), his classic portrait of life in the Dutch East Indies, within a year of the first publication of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). From at least the early 1890s, their careers and preoccupations converge to the extent that Couperus has on occasion been referred to as the Dutch Conrad. While the setting and style of their keynote works often contrast in distinct ways, they align through the subtle yet unmistakeable anti-colonial critique they deliver, not least in their representation of degenerate white protagonists. To this, The Hidden Force adds an overripe and decadent Wildean style which invites a queer or oblique postcolonial reading, as this essay will demonstrate. This style allows Couperus to adopt a more radical position vis-a-vis the Dutch colonial presence in the Indies than has hitherto been considered to be the case, or that the plot mechanics of white degeneration make possible – one compares in interesting ways with the inescapable ambiguities of Conrad’s colonial fiction. Show less
In Savage Embraces: James Purdy, Melodrama, and the Narration of Identity, Looi van Kessel explores the ways in which the early works of the American author James Purdy undermine the notion of a... Show moreIn Savage Embraces: James Purdy, Melodrama, and the Narration of Identity, Looi van Kessel explores the ways in which the early works of the American author James Purdy undermine the notion of a stable and true identity. Writing in the 1950s and 60s, a time in which identity politics enjoyed increased purchase in the United States, Purdy imagines characters who feel the urge to act out their sexual desires without having to conform to oppressive identity categories. In so doing, Purdy is searching for a language that shows how identity is produced through narration. To tease out this language, Looi approaches Purdy’s writing through the mode of melodrama—a mode that focuses on the aesthetic dramatization of tensions in the plot—while also bringing his work in conversation with current queer thinking. Ultimately, this dissertation attempts to bring the disparate fields of narrative theory and queer theory in a meaningful relation with one another. Show less
