Joseph Conrad's political novels, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes, are examined in a new critical study. Each novel has a distinctive method of narration which is explored in and of itself. The study finds its unity in the discovery of ironic affirmation broadly underlying the more obvious themes of each novel. Authorial intrusion and direct commentary are attributed to the narrators of each novel rather than to Conrad and are seen as the primary loci of assertion of affirmation. / Nostromo is narrated by a divided consciousness: a narrative voice which essentially carries out the storytelling functions and an intrusive voice which corrects and defines reader perceptions, calling the reader to distanced participation in the life of the novel. The Secret Agent is narrated by a voice which gives clues to its own personality while adding its own valuation and which ranges from grimly comic in its early perceptions to transcendently tragic in its concluding views. The narrator of Under Western Eyes fails in deluding the reader about his character but succeeds in becoming a symbolical figure in the dialectic of the novel. / All three novels develop the idea of the failure of political solutions in modern civilization. This failure added to the failure of traditional absolutes is countered by the tenuous assertion, arising from the narrative techniques of the novels, of a belief in human community. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-01, Section: A, page: 0202. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74387 |
| Contributors | JUSTICE, ESTHER LOUISE., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 145 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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