Christopher Cairney | Middle Georgia State University (original) (raw)

Papers by Christopher Cairney

Doğuş Üniversitesi Dergisi, Jan 27, 2001

Wiley-Blackwell eBooks, Mar 1, 2009

Cairney, Christopher T. (Dogus Author)..

BRILL eBooks, 2004

AT THE BEGINNING of Part I, Chapter 6 of Nostromo, the reader is struck by the description of the... more AT THE BEGINNING of Part I, Chapter 6 of Nostromo, the reader is struck by the description of the "equestrian statue of Charles IV at the entrance to the Alameda ... known ... as the Horse of Stone" (48). Keith Carabine has suggested that the statue recalls Manuel Tolsa's famous bronze statue of 1803 of Carlos IV of Spain (1748-1819) in Mexico City (1984: 579).1 Conrad's knowledge of that monument, however, is somewhat less likely than his acquaintance with the famous equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg, which "folk of the country" there call "The Bronze Horseman." Conrad, who alludes to that statue in his 1905 essay "Autocracy and War,"2 is likely to have known it through Pushkin's posthumously published poem "The Bronze Horseman" (1837) or Adam Mickiewicz's "The Forefather's Eve" (1832) as well as through the popular or monthly press, the statue being widely reproduced in photographs.The narrator describes "the weather-stained effigy of the mounted king, with its vague suggestion of a saluting gesture" (49), a gesture thought to be enigmatic and leading to the creation of its own lore and legend. The imposing figure takes on a symbolic temporal solidity amidst the moving masses: a "kingly cavalier reining in his steed on the pedestal above the sleeping [people] ... with his marble arm raised" (48). Later, in Part III, Chapter IV, the narrator describes "the equestrian statue of the King dazzlingly ... towering enormous and motionless above the surges of the crowd, with its eternal gesture of saluting" (385)."The Bronze Horseman" in St Petersburg, like Conrad's fictional statue, originally stood in the central square of a pre-revolutionary city, surrounded by the seats of civil and religious power. Catherine the Great commissioned the monument, unveiling E. M. Falconet's masterwork to rapt crowds in August 1782. It clearly symbolized the might of imperial Russia and the continuity of t sardo m, and a legend arose that no enemy would take the city whilst it stood in place. As in Nostromo, where "The Horse of Stone" has pride of place in Sulaco's main plaza, the square in which "The Bronze Horseman" stands was a place of military exercise and public merry-making.Given that Pushkin's poem may figure in the background to Nostromo, it seems necessary to consider the statue's specific meaning. While "The Bronze Horseman" was historically seen as protective and leading Russia to the West while resisting Sweden and Finland, Pushkin's interpretation saw Peter the Great in contemporary terms as representing Nicholas I; Russians, in other words, were being trampled under autocracy's hooves. Pushkin's treatment would probably have had signal appeal to Conrad, and the subject of oppression and revolt has an allegorical power applicable to partitioned Poland. Additionally, the subject of the personal cost to the revolutionaries of failure and guilt is part of Conrad's family background.Pushkin's poem treats the flooding of the Neva, which engulfed St Petersburg and the base of the statue itself in 1824. However, Pushkin also had friends among the ill-fated Decembrists of 1825 who opposed the tsar. A revolutionary flood, they were beaten back, and it can be said that "The Bronze Horseman" was twice engulfed in a "flood." Pushkin's horseman remains victor over both. Pushkin was fascinated by American democracy and may in the poem cast the contest between the river and the city in 1824 as a battle between the forces of democracy and autocracy in Russia in 1825. "The Tsarist authorities," who banned the poem during Pushkin's lifetime, found it "anti-autocratic," and Russian censorship is a large issue here with Conrad remembering the experience of post-partition Poland.In Nostromo, too, Sulaco's main square is eventually a site of revolutionary pilgrimage, the site of the key battle of the revolution, a battle won through blood: "The Plaza. I call it magnificent. Twice the area of Trafalgar Square. …

During the eighteenth-century, the antagonist, previously the second most important character in ... more During the eighteenth-century, the antagonist, previously the second most important character in a story, becomes, first in Richardson's Clarissa, and then under Gothic influence, the main character in the novel. This recalls the “heavy” villain of Elizabethan drama. The use to which the character is put by the author is both consciously and unconsciously political or ideological, at least in part. Under political influence, the antagonist can be classified as either “repentant” or “unrepentant,” with very different effects, as a New Historicist or Cultural Materialist analysis can reveal. The Gothic antagonist is set within the Gothic novel, and together with other conventions of the Gothic novel became the basis of later interpretations of the Gothic impulse in novels of various sub-genres, from oriental fiction and science fiction to the modern romance novel.Bir öykünün karşıt karakteri (antagonist), yani, ikinci önemli karakteri, önce Richardson'un ellerinde birinci önem...

This volume offers new research and thoughtful reflection on the subject of canonicity in Scottis... more This volume offers new research and thoughtful reflection on the subject of canonicity in Scottish literature, from the Romantic grand narratives of the 18th and 19th century to post-modernist deconstructions of national myths. The essays collected here examine fundamental questions about nationalism and canon formation from a range of critical perspectives and distinct contextualisations: writers discussed include, among others, Robert Burns, Christian Carstairs, Mary Diana Dods, A. L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway, John Gait, Alasdair Gray, Christian Isobel Johnstone, Jean Marshal, Margaret Oliphant, Walter Scott and Nan Shepherd. Re-Visioning Scotland not only contributes to the contemporary, lively national debate about issues of Scottish identity and writing but also offers a rich and fascinating case-study, which will reveal to scholars, even beyond the disciplinary borders of Scottish studies, new and stimulating paths of investigation and understanding

ABSTRACT: During the eighteenth-century, the antagonist, previously the second most important cha... more ABSTRACT: During the eighteenth-century, the antagonist, previously the second most important character in a story, becomes, first in Richardson's Clarissa, and then under Gothic influence, the main character in the novel. This recalls the "heavy" villain of Elizabethan drama. The use to which the character is put by the author is both consciously and unconsciously political or ideological, at least in part. Under political influence, the antagonist can be classified as either "repentant " or "unrepentant, " with very different effects, as a New Historicist or Cultural Materialist analysis can reveal. The Gothic antagonist is set within the Gothic novel, and together with other conventions of the Gothic novel became the basis of later interpretations of the Gothic impulse in novels of various sub-genres, from oriental fiction and science fiction to the modern romance novel.

The Conradian : the Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society, 2004

The Conradian the Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society, Oct 1, 2004

Malcolm/A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story, 2008

Dogus Universitesi Dergisi, Mar 3, 2011

Re- Visioning Scotland: New Readings from the Cultural Canon, 2008

Discussion of the complexity or subtlety of the links or connections between Medieval Ireland and... more Discussion of the complexity or subtlety of the links or connections between Medieval Ireland and Scotland; specific instances; historiographical and historicist issues.

Monsters of Film, Fiction and Fable: The Cultural Links Between the Human and the Inhuman, 2018

Adomnán's sixth-century "Life of St. Columba" has often been used to "bolster" belief in the Loch... more Adomnán's sixth-century "Life of St. Columba" has often been used to "bolster" belief in the Loch Ness Monster, yet specific historical and cultural analysis of Adomnán tends to completely separate Adomnán’s story about St. Columba from the modern myth of the Loch Ness Monster, and finds an earlier and more culturally significant use of Celtic “water beast” folklore along the way. Judicious application of Critical Theory and structural analysis can discredit any strong connection between kelpies and water-horses on the one hand and the modern “media-augmented” creation of the Loch Ness Monster on the other. Without St. Columba, the myth of the Loch Ness Monster falters,
for belief in the creature can be seen to rest upon several oft-cited but easily discredited foundations.

In the context generally of Conrad’s evident record of intertextuality, Frankenstein may also be ... more In the context generally of Conrad’s evident record of intertextuality, Frankenstein may also be something of an ur-text or to some extent a source for Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and for other Conradian productions as well. This possibility is examined and along with it the workings of intertextuality in relation to meaning and interpretation. A semiotic formulation of intertextuality can be beneficial for Conradian hermeneutics. The concept of intratextuality is extended to include several (and potentially or theoretically, all) texts by Conrad (and by methodological analogy, any particular author).