Conrad's mediation in American literature : focus on his dialogic relations with eugene o'neill

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This research explores the literary connections between Joseph Conrad and a selection of American authors across three generations, from James Fenimore Cooper up to Eugene O'Neill. The purpose is to shed light in the placement of Conrad in the American literary tradition. To this end, the dialogic or intertextual approach inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva is used but with a significant inflection of the paradigm of dialogism or intertextuality by the new insights provided by the recent theories of gift exchange such as the ones elaborated by Lewis Hyde and Georges Bataille. The research significantly shows that though our modern cultures are overrun by monetary gains, literature remains the domain par excellence wherein the gift community survives the onslaught of the cash nexus and the commodification of human life.