Title: Conrad, language, and narrative
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.
Subjects: Fiction, History, Language, Narration (Rhetoric), Technique, Conrad, joseph, 1857-1924, Fiction, technique, Langue, Roman, Narration, LITERARY CRITICISM, European, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Language and languages, Sprache, Vertelkunst, Literaire taal, Criticism and interpretation
People: Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Time periods: 20th century