Thesis (M.A.) from the year 1999 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, language: English, abstract: Joseph Conrad - a Pole by birth - is a writer who has exercised a very potent influence on his generation, but his impact has expanded well beyond. He has inspired English, American, African and Polish novelists and poets. One of his staunch admirers was the young English novelist, Graham Greene (1904-1991). However if Conrad's integrity as a writer with a strong moral sense won the attention of both the reading public and many reviewers, the positive response that welcomed Greene's first published novel The Man Within (1929) almost died out with the novels that came next, The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1931). Greene himself attributed the failure of these novels to Conrad's 'too great and too disastrous influence.' Although Greene recaptured some of that praise by the remarkable craftsmanship of Stamboul Train (1932), many critics contested any claim to Greene being a leading writer of his generation, hence excluded him from the literary arena for many years. Critics were reluctant to recognize Greene's literary worth first because they believed that he was not exactly an original writer; second, because the inclusion of religious themes in his works, while it arrested the attention of some Catholic writers, disconcerted many others. In this comparative study of Conrad's The Secret Agent and Greene's It's A Battlefield, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Greene's A Burnt-Out-Case, I shall attempt to investigate and elucidate what in Conrad exercised such power and fascination on Greene. The focus of interest is to try and find answers to these questions: has Greene's vow 'never again' to read a novel by Conrad 'which he kept for more than a quarter of a century' been successful? Has Greene succeeded in writing off the ghost of Conrad? If not, do the borrowings from Conrad undermine Greene's writings in any way? Such study should
About the Author: Bio: Malika REBAI MAAMRI is a Senior Lecturer at the National Postgraduate School of Political Science in Algiers, Algeria. She holds a PHD jointly from the University of Algiers and the University of Essex (UK). With an interdisciplinary orientation, her research interests include literature with a focus on cultural contact, political community in Africa, gender and women's rights, EFL teaching, pedagogy and Education. She is the author of several articles, and chapters of books, most of which are published in international journals. She is also a collaborative member of the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge where she participated in a Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Program on Citizenship and Political Community in Africa. She was an Associate editor for the International Journal of Learning (USA). She edited an e-book entitled A Journey through Forgiveness (2010) and a hardcopy book entitled Mapping Forgiveness (2012) both published by Oxford Interdisciplinary Press (UK). She is currently writing a book on citizenship in Algeria.