Conrad, Language, and Narrative

Michael Greaney examines the place of language and narrative in the writings of Joseph Conrad.

Michael Greaney (Author)

9780521120845, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 1 October 2009

208 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.31 kg

"Given the impressive bibliography and the undeviating argument, this book may best be used as a supplement in teaching college students to read Conrad intelligently. Recommended." Choice

In this re-evaluation of the writings of Joseph Conrad, Michael Greaney places language and narrative at the heart of his literary achievement. A trilingual Polish expatriate, Conrad brought a formidable linguistic self-consciousness to the English novel; tensions between speech and writing are the defining obsessions of his career. He sought very early on to develop a 'writing of the voice' based on oral or communal modes of storytelling. Greaney argues that the 'yarns' of his nautical raconteur Marlow are the most challenging expression of this voice-centred aesthetic. But Conrad's suspicion that words are fundamentally untrustworthy is present in everything he wrote. The political novels of his middle period represent a breakthrough from traditional storytelling into the writerly aesthetic of high modernism. Greaney offers an examination of a wide range of Conrad's work which combines recent critical approaches to language in post-structuralism with an impressive command of linguistic theory.

Introduction
Part I. Speech communities: 1. 'The realm of living speech': Conrad and oral community
2. 'Murder by language': 'Falk' and Victory
3. 'Drawing-room voices': language and space in The Arrow of Gold
Part II. Marlow: 4. Modernist storytelling: 'Youth' and 'Heart of Darkness'
5. The scandals of Lord Jim
6. The gender of Chance
Part III. Political communities: 7. Nostromo and anecdotal history
8. Linguistic dystopia: The Secret Agent
9. 'Gossip, tales, suspicions': language and paranoia in Under Western Eyes
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF]