No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Heart of Darkness, Chance, and Lord Jim can be described as philosophical works if considered in light of "ordinary language" philosophy. Conrad wrestled with skepticism much as Wittgenstein later would, but his struggle with the "bewitchment" of skeptical thinking took a narratival form. His champion was Marlow, raconteur of the three novels, who recurrently loses and recovers his words and his capacity to tell (to judge, to narrate). In these works the Marlovian investigation of human convention, linguistic and otherwise, is shown to be a necessary but perilous task. The possibility that we may be dissatisfied with the ordinary or transcendental conditions of living is dramatized in all three novels, often (but not only) by threats to marriage. Heart of Darkness demonstrates the loss of linguistic attunement that may follow upon taking human relation to be a problem of knowledge, and links this to Kurtz's world-devouring repudiation of the ordinary. Chance explores in melodramatic form the "germ of destruction at the source of our strength", and unmasks men's denial of women as one face of skepticism. Lord Jim presents skepticism, Romanticism, and fantasy as different versions of ontological dissatisfaction, and shows how a return to the ordinary requires a practice of reading and remembering (our words).

No description available.

Thèse de doctorat : Etudes anglophones : Lyon 2 : 2001. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. Index.

This thesis explores stylistic features in two novels by Joseph Conrad--The Nigger of the "Narcissus" published in 1897 and The Rover published in 1923. The main focus of the discussion of these novels is the way in which form and meaning are integrated, that is, how style creates and affects theme and subject. In particular, the various literary devices that create style--the individual word, the sentence, and larger elements such as metaphoric and metonymic patterns—are dealt with. These elements are considered under three headings: dialogue, narrative, and imagery. The mimetic character of dialogue, its integration into a text, the various types of dialogue such as reported speech and direct discourse, and variations of dialogue such as interior monologue and free indirect style are discussed in relation to theme. Secondly, narrative, the larger frame into which dialogue fits, is treated at length, with narrative method, the characteristics of narrative prose in both novels, and the effects produced by Conrad's attention to rhythm and vocabulary forming the central concerns of this section. Lastly, metaphor and simile are discussed as stylistic elements not confined to individual sentences or passages but extending over an entire work, and as the means by which visual and auditory impressions are conveyed to the reader. The traditional types of simile and metaphor, "as if" and "as though" clauses functioning as similes, and metonymic images are analyzed with the intention of demonstrating the relationship between technique and vision. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis focuses on Conrad's representation of space and atmosphere in the "impressionistic" works published between 1897 and 1904, notably The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897), "Heart of Darkness" (1899), Lord Jim (1900), and Nostromo (1904). The many conflicting statements regarding the nature of Conrad's impressionism lead one to ask two fundamental questions: What constitutes this strange and elusive phenomenon, and how does it bear upon interpretation? This thesis works towards defining the elusive quality of Conrad's writing by investigating and assessing the contribution of impressionist techniques in the creation of a pervasive space and atmosphere; secondly, it considers how the various constituent elements interact with, and complement one another to form a dominant mode of fictional space in each work; and, thirdly, it indicates the possible impact that these particular Conradian configurations of space and atmosphere might have upon the interpretation of his impressionist works. The thesis argues that the existential condition of isolatio~experienced by Conrad's heroes and narrators is a consequence of epistemological frustration and fragmentation, which, in turn, is a function of impressionist ontology. There is a definite and complementary relationship between each of these notions in Conrad's fiction. The mysterious atmosphere in his works results from the interplay between various configurations of theme, narration and description, and these novelistic elements correspond roughly with the notions of existential isolation (the dominant theme), epistemology (narrating, telling and (re)telling as a method of knowing and understanding the space in which the characters find themselves) and, lastly, the ontological dimensions of the various modes of fictional space (as realized in description). The evocation and invocation of cosmic space in The Nigger of the "Narcissus," the mapping of a dorriinant symbolic space in "Heart of Darkness," the (re)constructions of Jim's psychological space in Lord Jim, and, finally, the "transcription" and "inscription" of a mythical space in Nostromo, indicate a definite development from epistemological to ontological issues. Phrased in more theoretical terms, this development is a movement from asking predominantly epistemological questions like "How can I interpret this world of which I am a part?" "What is there to be known?" "Who knows it ... and with what degree of certainty?", to asking predominantly ontological questions, such as "Which world is this?" "What kinds of worlds are there ... and how are they constituted?". Such questions, categorized by McHale as the dominant characteristics of Modernist and Postmodernist fiction respectively, are already present in Conrad's texts, thus undermining any clear-cut division between these broad categories. Indeed, this thesis suggests that these categories are at best tenuous, and that they should perhaps be used heuristically, rather than definitively

No description available.