- Nic Panagopoulos is Assistant Professor in English Literature & Culture at the Department of English Language & Liter... moreNic Panagopoulos is Assistant Professor in English Literature & Culture at the Department of English Language & Literature. He obtained his BA (1988) and Ph.D. (1994) at Royal Holloway, University of London, in English and Drama/Theatre Studies and English, respectively. He is the author of The Fiction of Joseph Conrad: The Influence of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (Peter Lang, 1998), Heart of Darkness and The Birth of Tragedy: A Comparative Study (Booksurge, 2007), and the editor with Maria Schoina of the volume, The Place of Lord Byron in World History: Studies in His Life, Writings, and Influence (Εdwin Mellen Press, 2013). His research interests focus mostly on the Εnglish novel, comparative literature, and the links between literature and philosophy. Besides his work on Joseph Conrad, he has published on a wide range of canonical writers, such as Shakespeare, Swift, Byron, Dickens, Huxley, and Beckett.edit
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Referred to by Byron as his “Waterloo” Cain: A Mystery was risqué even for the standards of a poet who provoked more controversy during his lifetime than perhaps any other writer in the English canon. Too “Satanic” for contemporary... more
Referred to by Byron as his “Waterloo” Cain: A Mystery was risqué even
for the standards of a poet who provoked more controversy during his lifetime than perhaps any other writer in the English canon. Too “Satanic” for contemporary reviewers and clergy, without sporting the typical Byronic hero to counterbalance its perceived weaknesses of form or poetic decorum, the play was given a very uneven reception from friends and foes alike. The paper attempts to trace these responses and the reasons behind the (un-)popular reception of Cain. It is argued that Cain represented an experiment in style that didn’t come off and was misunderstood–ironically, even by Byron himself who was not sure exactly what he was doing with the drama, other than being provocative. Eventually, more than any other poem that Byron wrote, the text of Cain became fused not only with the author’s life, but with everything that was said or written about it, both before and after publication, resulting in a plural, public, and radically de-centred work that escapes critical consensus and theatrical orthodoxy to this day.
for the standards of a poet who provoked more controversy during his lifetime than perhaps any other writer in the English canon. Too “Satanic” for contemporary reviewers and clergy, without sporting the typical Byronic hero to counterbalance its perceived weaknesses of form or poetic decorum, the play was given a very uneven reception from friends and foes alike. The paper attempts to trace these responses and the reasons behind the (un-)popular reception of Cain. It is argued that Cain represented an experiment in style that didn’t come off and was misunderstood–ironically, even by Byron himself who was not sure exactly what he was doing with the drama, other than being provocative. Eventually, more than any other poem that Byron wrote, the text of Cain became fused not only with the author’s life, but with everything that was said or written about it, both before and after publication, resulting in a plural, public, and radically de-centred work that escapes critical consensus and theatrical orthodoxy to this day.
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In comparing King Lear and the Republic on the basis of their common preoccupation with the problem of justice, the present study shows Shakespeare borrowing Plato’s city-soul analogy as well as the related body-politic paradigm to... more
In comparing King Lear and the Republic on the basis of
their common preoccupation with the problem of justice, the present
study shows Shakespeare borrowing Plato’s city-soul analogy as well as
the related body-politic paradigm to explore crucial convergences between
ethics and politics. Yet, while both authors employ dialectical methods to
clarify philosophical questions in their respective dialogues, Shakespeare
goes beyond mere verbal debate, juxtaposing the characters’
pronouncements on justice with their actions as well what happens to
them during the course of King Lear to transcend the seeming absurdity
of his darkest tragedy. It is thus argued that King Lear not only lends
support for Socrates’ critique of imitative poetry in Book III of the
Republic due to its ethical inconsistencies and emotional effect, but
inversely puts to the test such fundamental Platonic notions as the
philosopher-king and the privileging of philosophy over poetry in the
instruction of virtue.
their common preoccupation with the problem of justice, the present
study shows Shakespeare borrowing Plato’s city-soul analogy as well as
the related body-politic paradigm to explore crucial convergences between
ethics and politics. Yet, while both authors employ dialectical methods to
clarify philosophical questions in their respective dialogues, Shakespeare
goes beyond mere verbal debate, juxtaposing the characters’
pronouncements on justice with their actions as well what happens to
them during the course of King Lear to transcend the seeming absurdity
of his darkest tragedy. It is thus argued that King Lear not only lends
support for Socrates’ critique of imitative poetry in Book III of the
Republic due to its ethical inconsistencies and emotional effect, but
inversely puts to the test such fundamental Platonic notions as the
philosopher-king and the privileging of philosophy over poetry in the
instruction of virtue.
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Research Interests: Plato and Joseph Conrad
This study draws thematic and narratological parallels between Lord Jim and The Lifted Veil, suggesting that Joseph Conrad's and George Eliot's philosophies and views on art were much closer than has hitherto been thought. In her... more
This study draws thematic and narratological parallels between Lord Jim and The Lifted Veil, suggesting that Joseph Conrad's and George Eliot's philosophies and views on art were much closer than has hitherto been thought. In her uncharacteristic foray into gothic fiction, Eliot seems to have anticipated many of the modernist techniques usually associated with Conrad, such as the loss of narrative authority and spatiotemporal coherence on which realist conventions were based. This essay also analyzes Conrad's and Eliot's use of the veil motif to address ontological and epistemological problems raised by idealist philosophy such as the interdependence of object and subject and the impossibility of directly apprehending the world. The anticipated epiphanies resulting from lifting the veil in Lord Jim and The Lifted Veil are finally indistinguishable from psychological projection since they give access to merely another level of illusion rather than to any underlying truth.
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This paper attempts to theorize two twentieth-century fictional dystopias, Brave New World (2013) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), using Plato's political dialogues. It explores not only how these three authors' utopian/dystopian visions... more
This paper attempts to theorize two twentieth-century fictional dystopias, Brave New World (2013) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), using Plato's political dialogues. It explores not only how these three authors' utopian/dystopian visions compare as types of narrative, but also how possible, desirable, and useful their imagined societies may be, and for whom. By examining where the Republic, Brave New World, and Nineteen Eighty-Four stand on such issues as social engineering, censorship, cultural and sexual politics, the paper allows them to inform and critique each other, hoping to reveal in the process what may or may not have changed in utopian thinking since Plato wrote his seminal work. It appears that the social import of speculative fiction is ambivalent, for not only may it lend itself to totalitarian appropriation and application-as seems to have been the case with The Republic-but it may also constitute a means of critiquing the existing status quo by conceptualizing different ways of thinking and being, thereby allowing for the possibility of change.
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Reviewing the extensive bibliography on the case, the present paper corroborates David Nicoll’s thesis in The Greenwich Mystery! (1897) that the terrorist outrage constituted a false flag attack designed to discredit the anarchist... more
Reviewing the extensive bibliography on the case, the present paper corroborates David Nicoll’s thesis in The Greenwich Mystery! (1897) that the terrorist outrage constituted a false flag attack designed to discredit the anarchist movement and justify changes to Britain’s asylum laws. The paper also finds that the Nicoll pamphlet, rather than private communication with an “omniscient friend,” represents the primary source of The Secret Agent (1906), furnishing Conrad with details about the plot, the various parties involved, and even the explosive device used. On the other hand, although Conrad would have been suspicious of the official narrative promoted by the press following the attack, professional reasons led him to emulate the London dailies to the extent of presenting the Greenwich bombing in a sensationalist and xenophobic light in The Secret Agent. Moreover, it is argued that Conrad’s precarious position as a Polish émigré and asylum-seeker in Britain prompted him not only to psychologize many of the crucial political issues arising from the incident, but also to downplay domestic complicity in the terrorist plot in favor of foreign involvement from far-away “Crim-Tartary.” We conclude that the false flag paradigm which Conrad, following Nicoll, uses to account for the terrorist attack nicknamed “Bourdin’s Folly” implies that resistance is itself hijacked by those forces that have vested interests in sustaining a “bad world for poor people.”
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The present paper begins by arguing that, unlike the omnipresent phrase “one of us” in Lord Jim which has two easily identifiable primary sources, namely Genesis 3:22 and Poetics II, the source of the related poetic leitmotif which... more
The present paper begins by arguing that, unlike the omnipresent phrase “one of us” in Lord Jim which has two easily identifiable primary sources, namely Genesis 3:22 and Poetics II, the source of the related poetic leitmotif which imagines grief or shame as a clouded sky is multiple and protean. What Conrad called “the common expressions, ‘under a cloud’” (LJ 259) is shown to have travelled through such grand narratives as Homer’s Iliad (750-700 BC), Sophocles’ Antigone (442-441 BC), and Euripides’ Hippolytus (428 BC), before gracing the pages of Lord Jim. In the shame culture of epic, the clouded-sky motif is identified as signaling the warrior’s rising ire through the pathetic fallacy. In tragedy, on the other hand, the same motif in conjunction with the convention of the theatrical mask is said to signify the opaqueness and inaccessibility of the human psyche which necessitates the construction of identity while facilitating the production of scapegoats. However, in keeping with the anti-Gnostic pessimism that Conrad shares with the Greek tragedians, Lord Jim presents the ontological and moral fog surrounding the protagonist as a blessing in disguise since, as Oedipus’ fate illustrates, there may be more danger finally in being understood than in being misunderstood. Thus, given that Jim is “one of us”, his clouded countenance—akin to a mask shielding an actor’s face from himself as much as from the audience—is presented by the novel as humanity’s last line of defense against tragic knowledge.
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The contention of the present comparative study is that the closest Shakespearean work to Conrad’s Victory is not The Tempest, as has previously been thought, but Romeo and Juliet. Besides various thematic links between these two texts,... more
The contention of the present comparative study is that the closest Shakespearean work to Conrad’s Victory is not The Tempest, as has previously been thought, but Romeo and Juliet. Besides various thematic links between these two texts, also noted by Adam Gillon (1976), I argue that Victory and Romeo and Juliet are connected on the level of genre, plot, and characterization, with whole scenes in Conrad’s novel mirroring those in Shakespeare’s play. In conclusion I suggest that the striking similarities between the two works can either be explained by a conscious desire on Conrad’s part to imitate Shakespeare’s art, or by a kind of involuntary emulation, whereby the novelist had so far assimilated the Bard’s work as to follow it unconsciously while composing his own novel.
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This paper attempts to draw parallels and propose points of comparison between Byron's and Nietzsche's responses to social progress in their resorting to the modern cult of the individual—especially in the idealized form of the... more
This paper attempts to draw parallels and propose points of comparison between Byron's and Nietzsche's responses to social progress in their resorting to the modern cult of the individual—especially in the idealized form of the Übermensch, or the great human being who is beyond good and evil. Of particular interest are the contradictions and inconsistencies which both writers display in attempting to combat modernity with its own weapons, as it were. Thus, it will be argued, Byron and Nietzsche resist the erosion of ancien regime values by positing in their work a neo-classical ideal of heroic rebellion and aristocratic anarchism which is itself a by-product of the very Enlightenment project they appear to critique.
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• The essay asks whether Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) is really a dystopia as its author presented it in his letters, or a utopia in which god-like men methodically arrange their own affairs, recreating Eden on Earth and... more
• The essay asks whether Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) is really a dystopia as its author presented it in his letters, or a utopia in which god-like men methodically arrange their own affairs, recreating Eden on Earth and bringing social harmony and stability to pass. We explore Huxley's elitist background, his eugenicist theories, and his personal tastes in drugs and sex to discover that there is nothing really in the futuristic society depicted in Brave New World that its author would have felt uncomfortable with; even the punishments it metes out to dissenters would have resembled rewards for intellectuals like Huxley. By comparing the novel with Huxley's later fiction and non-fiction, we conclude that Brave New World is one of many speculative narratives produced in the early twentieth century designed to covertly promote the idea of the World State and act as a vehicle for the social Darwinist agenda of the scientific elite.
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Although Schopenhauer's Infuence in Conrad has been acknowledged for some time, there have been no booklength studeis dealing exclusively with this subject, or the much-debated question relationship to Nietzsche. The pesent study comes to... more
Although Schopenhauer's Infuence in Conrad has been acknowledged for some time, there have been no booklength studeis dealing exclusively with this subject, or the much-debated question relationship to Nietzsche. The pesent study comes to fill this gap in Conrad criticism, and show how a knoweldge of these two philoosphers' main ideas can help illuminate the cnetral concerns and presusppositions of Conrad's fiction. The author argues that the novelist was often grappling with the same problems as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and responding to some of the key issues of the Idealistic movement in the history of ideas.