03261oam 22005534a 450 991027235430332120210915044239.01-5017-2271-91-5017-2272-710.7591/9781501722721(CKB)4340000000258193(MiAaPQ)EBC5317499(DE-B1597)496504(OCoLC)1028941270(DE-B1597)9781501722721(OCoLC)1057684906(MdBmJHUP)muse67518(EXLCZ)99434000000025819319870303d1987 uy 0engurcnu||||||||rdacontentrdamediardacarrierThe Challenge of BewildermentUnderstanding and Representation in James, Conrad, and Ford /Paul B. ArmstrongIthaca :Cornell University Press,1987.©1987.1 online resource (276 pages)Includes index.0-8014-1949-2 1-5017-2273-5 Includes bibliographical references and index.Frontmatter --Contents --Preface --Introduction: Bewilderment, Understanding, and Representation --PART I. Jamesian Bewilderment: The Composing Powers of Consciousness --PART II. Conradian Bewildennent: The Metaphysics of Belief --PART III. Fordian Bewilderment: The Primacy of Unreflective Experience --Epilogue: Bewilderment and Modern Fiction --IndexThe Challenge of Bewilderment treats the epistemology of representation in major works by Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Ford Madox Ford, attempting to explain how the novel turned away from its traditional concern with realistic representation and toward self-consciousness about the relation between knowing and narration. Paul B. Armstrong here addresses the pivotal thematic experience of "bewilderment," an experience that challenges the reader's very sense of reality and that shows it to have no more certainty or stability than an interpretative construct. Through readings of The Sacred Fount and The Ambassadors by James, Lord Jim and Nostromo by Conrad, and The Good Soldier and Parade's End by Ford, Armstrong examines how each writer dramatizes his understanding of the act of knowing. Armstrong demonstrates how the novelists' attitudes toward the process of knowing inform experiments with representation, through which they thematize the relation between the understanding of a fictional world and everyday habits of perception. Finally, he considers how these experiments with the strategies of narration produce a heightened awareness of the process of interpretation.Knowledge, Theory of, in literatureMimesis in literatureEnglish fiction20th centuryHistory and criticismElectronic books. Knowledge, Theory of, in literature.Mimesis in literature.English fictionHistory and criticism.823/.912/09Armstrong Paul B.1949-968813MdBmJHUPMdBmJHUPBOOK9910272354303321The Challenge of Bewilderment2433197UNINA