Conrad, language, and narrative
By: Michael Greaney.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Cambridge, U.K; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 194
Subjects: Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 -- Language; Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 -- Technique; Fiction -- Technique; Narration (Rhetoric) -- History -- 20th century
Description: "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."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-192) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: PART I SPEECH COMMUNITIES; title: 'The realm of living speech': Conrad and; title: oral community; title: 2 'Murder by language': 'Falk' and Victory; title: 3 'Drawing-room voices': language and space; title: in The Arrow of Gold; title: PART II MARLOW; title: 4 Modernist storytelling: 'Youth' and; title: 'Heart of Darkness'; title: 5 The scandals of Lord Jim; title: 6 The gender of Chance; title: PART III POLITICAL COMMUNITIES; title: 7 Nostromo and anecdotal history; title: 8 Linguistic dystopia: The Secret Agent; title: 9 'Gossip, tales, suspicions': language and paranoia; title: in Under Western Eyes; title: Conclusion; title: Notes; title: Bibliography; title: Index.