• Robert Hampson's Contribution to Conrad Studies
• John G. Peters (bio)

Robert Hampson is among the most prominent Conrad scholars in the world today. He is also among the most prolific. Along with numerous articles, book chapters, and edited works, Robert Hampson has written three monographs on Conrad, all making important contributions to the development of the history of commentary on Conrad's works.

I first encountered Hampson's work many years ago while reviewing a collection of essays on Conrad. In an otherwise pedestrian volume, Hampson's essay was among few that stood out from the rest. Invariably, that has been a pattern in my experience. I am always impressed by the quality and originality of Hampson's work. This fact is all the more impressive when one considers that Hampson often works in well-traveled areas of scholarship (such as Conrad and colonialism or Conrad's later career) and yet consistently contributes new and evocative insights to the critical conversations.

Hampson's first such work was his Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity (1992). As early as Virginia Woolf's reviews of Conrad's later novels in the Times Literary Supplement, concern began to be expressed about the literary quality of Conrad's later works. Not until M.C. Bradbrook's Joseph Conrad: Poland's English Genius (1941), though, did scholars pick up this thought and elaborate on it. Bradbrook's study was followed by Albert Guerard's Joseph Conrad (1947), Douglas Hewitt's Conrad: A Reassessment (1952), and finally Thomas Moser's Joseph Conrad: Achievement and Decline (1957), which codified this "achievement and decline" theory concerning Conrad's career. This view of Conrad's works became the dominant view on Conrad criticism for twenty-five or more years, and still has many adherents. To be sure, Paul L. Wiley, in his Conrad's Measure of Man (1954), took issue with this theory, as did John A. Palmer in his Joseph Conrad's Fiction: A Study in Literary Growth (1968), but these were voices crying in the wilderness as it were. Beginning [End Page iii] with Gary Geddes's Conrad's Later Novels (1980) and Daniel R. Schwarz's Conrad: The Later Fiction (1982), some scholars started to challenge the "achievement and decline" theory in earnest. Geddes and Schwarz, however, tend to respond to the "achievement and decline" theory by arguing that Conrad's later works still reflect his early ideas and strengths but in a different way. It was not until Hampson's Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity (1992), though, that anyone argued that Conrad in fact shifted direction in his later writings and sought to do something different from what he had done previously. This critical turn would largely push the debate about Conrad's later work in a new direction, as those who followed Hampson, such as Susan Jones in her Conrad and Women (1999) and Katherine Isobel Baxter in her Joseph Conrad and the Swan Song of Romance (2010), ceased to argue necessarily for the literary quality or focus of Conrad's later works in light of his early works and instead argued for their value based upon other criteria.

Like Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Hampson's next monograph, Cross-Cultural Encounters in Joseph Conrad's Malay Fiction (2000), also enters a well-established critical conversation. Even though commentary on Conrad's colonial fiction goes back at least as far as Florence Clemens's dissertation "Conrad's Malaysian Fiction" (1937), criticism on the colonial aspects of Conrad's works did not begin in earnest until Chinua Achebe's famous essay "An Image of Africa" (1977). Since that time, issues of colonialism and imperialism in Conrad's works have been consistently one of the most dominant strains of commentary even down to the present. Much of the discussion has tended to consider issues related to whether Conrad affirmed or rejected colonial practice and ideology, as we see, for example, in Benita Parry's Conrad and Imperialism: Ideological Boundaries and Visionary Frontiers (1983) or even Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism (1993). Hampson, however, focuses instead on the way in which the West perceives the East and more particularly how Conrad presents the West through its...

• 罗伯特·汉普森（Robert Hampson）对康拉德研究的贡献
• 约翰·彼得斯（生物）

罗伯特·汉普森（Robert Hampson）是当今世界上最杰出的康拉德学者之一。他也是最多产的人之一。罗伯特·汉普森（Robert Hampson）撰写了三本专着介绍康拉德（Conrad）的专着，并撰写了大量文章，书中的章节和编辑过的作品，所有这些都为康拉德（Conrad）作品的评论史的发展做出了重要贡献。

多年前，我在回顾有关康拉德的论文集时第一次遇到了汉普森的作品。从其他方面来看，汉普森的论文是其他论文中脱颖而出的。一直以来，这都是我的经验模式。汉普森作品的质量和独创性给我留下了深刻的印象。当人们认为汉普森经常在学问渊博的学术领域工作（例如康拉德和殖民主义或康拉德的后来职业）并且始终如一地为批判性对话贡献新的和令人回味的见解时，这一事实就更加令人印象深刻。

汉普森的第一部此类作品是他的《约瑟夫·康拉德：背叛与身份》（1992年）。早在弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫（Virginia Woolf）在《时代文学增刊》中对康拉德后来的小说进行评论时，人们就开始关注康拉德后来的作品的文学品质。直到MC Bradbrook的《约瑟夫·康拉德：波兰的英国天才》（1941年）问世，学者们才开始思考并详细阐述这一思想。布拉德布鲁克的研究紧随其后的是阿尔伯特·瓜拉德（Albert Guerard）的约瑟夫·康拉德（Joseph Conrad）（1947），道格拉斯·休伊特（Douglas Hewitt）的《康拉德：重新评估》（1952），最后是托马斯·摩泽（Thomas Moser）的约瑟夫·康拉德：成就与衰落。（1957），整理了关于康拉德的事业的这个“成就和衰落”理论。康拉德作品的这种观点在25年或更长时间里成为康拉德批评的主流观点，并且仍然有很多拥护者。可以肯定的是，保罗·威立（Paul L. Wiley）在其康拉德（Conrad）的《人类的度量》（1954）中对此理论提出了质疑，就像约翰·帕尔默（John A. Palmer）在其《约瑟夫·康拉德的小说：文学增长研究》（1968）中一样，但这些都是声音。像在旷野一样哭泣。开始[尾页III]与加里·格迪斯的康拉德的小说后来（1980年）和Daniel R.施瓦茨的康拉德：后来的小说（1982），一些学者开始认真地挑战“成就与衰落”理论。然而，格德斯和施瓦茨倾向于对“成就与衰落”理论做出回应，认为康拉德的后期作品仍然以不同的方式反映了他的早期思想和优点。直到汉普森的《约瑟夫·康拉德：背叛与身份》（1992年）才有人争论说，康拉德实际上在他后来的著作中改变了方向，并试图做一些不同于他以前所做的事情。紧随其后的是汉普森（Hampson）的那些人， （2010），不再根据康拉德的早期作品为康拉德后期作品的文学品质或焦点争论，而是根据其他标准主张其价值。

像约瑟夫·康拉德：《背叛与身份》，汉普森的下一本专着，《约瑟夫·康拉德的马来小说中的跨文化遭遇》（2000），也进入了建立良好的批判性对话。尽管对康拉德的殖民小说的评论至少可以追溯到佛罗伦萨·克莱门斯的论文“康拉德的马来西亚小说”（1937年），但直到奇努亚·阿切贝（Chinua Achebe）著名的文章《非洲形象》，对康拉德作品的殖民方面的批评才开始引起人们的关注。 （1977）。自那时以来，康拉德作品中的殖民主义和帝国主义问题一直是迄今为止最主要的评论方式之一。正如我们在贝尼塔·帕里（Benita Parry）的《康拉德与帝国主义》中所看到的那样，许多讨论都倾向于考虑与康拉德是否确认或拒绝殖民实践和意识形态有关的问题：文化与帝国主义（1993）。然而，汉普森则侧重于西方对东方的看法，尤其是康拉德如何通过其西方形象来呈现西方。