1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910780286703321

Autore

Greaney Michael

Titolo

Conrad, language, and narrative / / Michael Greaney [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2002

ISBN

1-107-12457-3

0-521-12084-5

0-511-30383-1

0-511-15526-3

0-511-11987-9

1-280-16239-2

0-511-04448-8

0-511-48510-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (ix, 194 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

823/.912

Soggetti

Fiction - Technique

Narration (Rhetoric) - History - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-192) and index.

Nota di contenuto

pt. 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 -- pt. II. Marlow. 4. Modernist storytelling: 'Youth' and 'Heart of Darkness'. 5. The scandals of Lord Jim. 6. The gender of Chance -- pt. 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.

Sommario/riassunto

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.