This paper examines Edward Said's views on Joseph Conrad as a writer and thinker. Discussing the centrality of Conrad in Said's critical views, the writer suggests that a chronological survey of Said's comments on Conrad can delineate this critic's own intellectual trajectory. That is, an essentially aesthetic concern with Conrad's writings gradually develops into a politically-charged critique of the theme of colonialism and imperialism in his fiction. Ultimately, Said's life-long obsession with Conrad is shown to be related to the fact that Conrad's fiction, better than any other writer's, exemplifies Said's key critical concept of 'worldliness' of texts. In Conrad's case this worldliness is essentially linked, in Said's analysis, to the culture¬imperialism nexus manifested in the high cultural form of the novel.
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