Conrad's Fiction as Critical Discourse

This book makes a claim for the importance of theoretical ideas in Conrad's fiction as they are formed, tested, and eventually redefined.

Richard Ambrosini (Author)

9780521403498, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 July 1991

268 pages
23.7 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.532 kg

Joseph Conrad's comments about his works have commonly been dismissed as theoretically unsophisticated, while the critical notions of James, Woolf and Joyce have come to shape our understanding of the modern novel. Richard Ambrosini's study of Conrad's Fiction as Critical Discourse makes an original claim for the importance of his theoretical ideas as they are formed, tested, and eventually redefined in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Setting the narrator's discourse in these tales in the context of the dynamic interplay of Conrad's fictional with his non-fictional writings, and of the transformations in his narrative forms, Ambrosini defines Conrad's view of fiction and the artistic ideal underlying his commitment as a writer in a new and challenging way. Conrad's innovatory techniques as a novelist are shown in the continuity of his theoretical enterprise, from the early search for an artistic prose and a personal novel form, to the later dislocations of perspective achieved by manipulation of conventions drawn from popular fiction. This reassessment of Conrad's critical thought offers a new perspective on the transition from the Victorian novel to contemporary fiction.

Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. The critical discourse: five tropes
2. Working on language and structure: alternative strategies in The Nigger of the 'Narcissus,' 'Karain' and 'Youth'
3. The mirror effect in 'Heart of Darkness'
4. Lord Jim (I): the narrator as interpreter
5. Lord Jim (II): the narrator as reader
Postscript
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]