DOCSLIB.ORG

Conrad's Fiction As Critical Discourse by Richard Ambrosini

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Conrad's Fiction As Critical Discourse by Richard Ambrosini •«*#w* ""^^ "•"•sity ot Conrad's Fiction as Critical Discourse by Richard Ambrosini Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctorate Department of English University of Ottawa '^\ Richard Ambrosini, Ottawa, Canada, 1989. UMI Number: DC53558 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI® UMI Microform DC53558 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction p. 1 Chapter One: Critical Discourse: The Five Tropes p. 26 Part I: The Preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus" . p. 27 Part II: WORK p. 4 6 Part III: IDEALISM .... p. 61 Part IV: EFFECT p. 68 Part V: FIDELITY .... p. 80 Part VI: PRECISION . p. 8 9 Chapter Two: Working on Language and Structure: Alternative Strategies in Conrad's Choice of Authorship . p. 104 Chapter Three: The Mirror-Effect in "Heart of Darkness" p. 133 Chapter Four: Lord Jim (I): The Narrator as Interpreter . p. 180 Chapter Five: Lord Jim (II): The Narrator as Reader p. 240 Conclusion p. 2 90 Notes p. 300 Works Cited p. 356 i ABSTRACT The study which resulted in Conrad's Fiction as Critical Discourse was launched by the realization that Conrad uses Marlow's comments in "Heart of Darkness" and Lord Jim to direct the readers' attention toward the theoretical issues he is testing in his writing. This intellectual drama built into the fictional language led me to postulate that Con­ rad discovered and tested his own literary theories in the act of writ­ ing. His statements about his art are largely glosses on these dis­ coveries. The first implication of this postulate is that the distinc­ tion often made between the value of Conrad's tales and the sig­ nificance of the ideas at work in them is based on notions of theory and writing which do not take into account Conrad's own approach. The second is that, by setting the author's comments in the context of the transformation of his narrative forms, it is possible to reach a defini­ tion of his own view of fiction. The dismissal of the theoretical relevance of Conrad's comments about his work has frustrated the kind of discussion by which other moder­ nist writers have gained considerably. Henry James and James Joyce in­ troduced critical terms which have shaped the very notion of the modern novel. But when, as in Conrad's case, the author's personal voice does not attract much interest, and the ideas he suggests for interpreting his novels are "honor" and "fidelity," his statements of literary in­ tention are not valued as contributing to a critical discussion of the modern novel. As a matter of fact, Conrad does not use a readily identifiable critical language in his writings. When it came to set­ ting down his most deeply-felt convictions, he strove after the same ii kind of synthesis of abstract principles and life experience which he achieved in fiction. Chapter One of the present study outlines in Conrad's non- fiction­ al writings the metaphorical mode of expression which allowed him to express both the moral and aesthetic implications of his writing. This reading focuses on the five major tropes which synthesize his central concerns: WORK, IDEALISM, EFFECT, FIDELITY ancl PRECISION. Conrad uses the clusters of themes and words which form these tropes to cast his convictions in a figurative language. Conrad's use of these rhetori­ cal patterns throughout his letters and essays provides a frame of reference for seeing the continuity of his convictions. His repeated vindications of this continuity have been seen as a sign of his unreliability as a commentator on his own art. In fact, in his later years he was still reacting imaginatively to his earlier convic­ tions, still elaborating on the tropes running through his critical discourse. The most striking instance of this continuity is a piece he wrote a few months before his death, the preface to The Shorter Tales of Joseph Conrad (1924) . While editing his early stories, Con­ rad recalls, he saw "more clearly than ever before, that indeed those [early stories] were but paper boats freighted with a grown-up child's dreams" (Last Essays, 143). The present study argues that the "dream" which freights these tales with formal experimentations, authorial self-questioning, and figurative language, is that through fiction he could communicate a world view defeated by history and foreign to the language he was employing. He first enunciated his dream's aesthetic and moral implications in the 1897 Preface to The Nigger of the "Nar­ cissus. " And he carried out, tested and eventually re-defined it in "Heart of Darkness" and Lord Jim, his "paper boats." iii By uncovering the tropes and rhetorical patterns of Conrad's criti­ cal discourse, the present study has been able to interpret his metaphorical discussion of his "dream" in Marlow's narrative voice. The readings of The Nigger of the "Narcissus," "Karain" and "Youth," in Chapter Two, have set Marlow' s function in the context of Conrad's expectations as to how a critical language is to act on readers. Viewed in the light of the writing/sailing metaphor in particular, the im­ aginative sea captain aware of the dangers lurking below the surface of the sea seems less an idealized figure than a technical device. In trying to remain faithful to his memory, Marlow's moral concerns be­ come a questioning of the possibility itself of communicating his past experiences. Conrad can thus make explicit, through his internal narrator's addresses to his audience, the theoretical dimension of his own struggle to transform his own memories into visual impressions. The interpretation of "Heart of Darkness" in Chapter Three focuses on how Marlow's commentary draws a line between the sayable and the unsayable, thus enabling Conrad to distinguish the story of the events from the tale of the effect those events had on the narrator. In Chap­ ter Four, an analysis of Marlow's inquiry in the first part of Lord Jim will reveal that Conrad uses his narrator to force on readers a sense of Jim's "existence" - that is, of the reality of his predica­ ment. Marlow's commentary is, first and foremost, an interpretation of the young man's figurative language. Such an interpretation translates the expression of a subjective experience into a statement of this experience's universality. Chapter Five argues that, by presenting Patusan as the result of Marlow's interpretation of Jim's case, Con­ rad makes clear that only a fictional world can create that "suspen­ sion of disbelief" which makes a fictional character exist. iv In making his commitment to authorship in 1897, Conrad's convictions became as many motivations for writing in a form different from the novel he inherited from the Victorians. The story of this passionate conflict traces a recalcitrant capitulation to the conventions at work in the notion of fictionality which binds a community of readers. In the act of writing, Conrad realized that the chimera of a suggestive­ ly impressionistic language could not overcome the limits dividing reality from fiction. "Typhoon" marks the end of his "grown-up child's dreams." The works which follow comply with the genre conventions he had reacted against when he made his commitment to authorship. 1 INTRODUCTION The re-evaluation of Joseph Conrad's work in the second half of this century has uncovered in his texts complex narrational forms and star­ tling perceptions of the darkness in Western consciousness. That scholarly enterprise has discarded, apparently for good, several simplistic labels that earlier, less-refined approaches had attached to his fiction. Conrad's admission to the modernist pantheon, however, has not substantially redefined the earlier casting of the writer as a mature sailor who had spent his formative years in a world foreign to literary circles. The very assumptions which have made possible Conrad's re-evaluation are largely grounded on the notion that the valuable parts of his texts have to be rescued from their author's tampering with the product of his creative imagination. As a result, the com­ ments he makes about his own art in his fiction, letters, and essays are dismissed as perfunctory self-defenses. According to Douglas Hewitt, for example, Conrad seems to be "unaware of what qualities make him a great novelist." Reasoning along these lines, critics have felt that in assessing Conrad's greatness they were formulating for the first time the theoretical implications of his artistic choices. In the long run, however, the assumptions which have guided Conrad's reassessment have actually impeded understanding of the complexity of his work. The dismissal of the theoretical relevance of Conrad's com­ ments about his work has frustrated the kind of discussion by which other modernist writers have gained considerably. Henry James, Vir­ ginia Woolf and James Joyce all introduced critical terms which have 2 shaped the very notion of the modern novel. Their reflections on their craft have provided ever new contexts for the re-reading of their novels because their speculations tally with the theoretical assump­ tions they themselves helped to establish.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Nostromo a Tale of the Seaboard
    NOSTROMO A TALE OF THE SEABOARD By Joseph Conrad "So foul a sky clears not without a storm." —SHAKESPEARE TO JOHN GALSWORTHY Prepared and Published by: Ebd E-BooksDirectory.com AUTHOR'S NOTE "Nostromo" is the most anxiously meditated of the longer novels which belong to the period following upon the publication of the "Typhoon" volume of short stories. I don't mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending change in my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing life. And perhaps there was never any change, except in that mysterious, extraneous thing which has nothing to do with the theories of art; a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration; a phenomenon for which I can not in any way be held responsible. What, however, did cause me some concern was that after finishing the last story of the "Typhoon" volume it seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about. This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little time; and then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint for "Nostromo" came to me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote completely destitute of valuable details. As a matter of fact in 1875 or '6, when very young, in the West Indies or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short, few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere on the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a revolution.
    [Show full text]
  • Apollo Nałęcz-Korzeniowski As Critic and Translator
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Jagiellonian Univeristy Repository APOLLO NAŁĘCZ-KORZENIOWSKI AS CRITIC AND TRANSLATOR Grzegorz Zych The Jagiellonian University, Cracow 1. APOLLO KORZENIOWSKI AS A LITERARY CRITIC Apollo Nałęcz-Korzeniowski (1820–1869) was not only one of the most distinc- tive Polish playwrights of the second half of the 19th century, but also one of the best informed about new currents in literature. After his premature death, however, his poetry and plays were soon forgotten and for almost a century he was known only as the father of Konrad Korzeniowski, otherwise known as the distinguished English writer Joseph Conrad. It is only since the middle of the 20th century that his life and work have once again begun to attract the attention of scholars and literary critics. Apollo Nałęcz-Korzeniowski is known above all for being a Polish patriot. A couple of years before the outbreak of the 1863 January Uprising, he helped to organize the underground anti-tsarist “Committee of the Movement” in Warsaw – the forerunner of the later 1863 “National Central Committee qua Provisional National Government” (Komitet Centralny Narodowy jako Tymczasowy Rząd Narodowy). Although the tsarist police never discovered the true extent of his political activity – and in particular his involvement in organizing the “Committee of the Movement” – he was arrested on much lesser charges in 1861 and he and his wife Ewa were subse- quently sentenced to a term of exile in Russia.1 Together with their four-year-old son Konradek, the Korzeniowskis were eventually sent to Vologda.
    [Show full text]
  • Joseph Conrad
    Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, Joseph Conrad Polish: [ˈjuzɛf tɛˈɔdɔr ˈkɔnrat kɔʐɛˈɲɔfskʲi] ( listen); 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British writer[1][note 1] regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language.[2] Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature.[note 2] Conrad wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of what he saw as an impassive, inscrutable universe.[note 3] Conrad is considered an early modernist,[note 4] though his works contain elements of 19th-century realism.[3] His narrative style and anti-heroic characters[4] have influenced numerous authors, and many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that Conrad's fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events.[5][6] Conrad in 1904 Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew, among by George Charles Beresford other things, on his native Poland's national Born Józef Teodor Konrad [7]:290, 352[note 5] experiences and on his own experiences in the Korzeniowski French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and 3 December 1857 novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world— Berdychiv, Russian including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly Empire explore
    [Show full text]
  • Yearbook 12-2-Lam.Indd
    Yearbook of Conrad Studies (Poland) Vol. 12 2017, pp. 7–26 doi: 10.4467/20843941YC.17.001.8658 RAFAŁ MARCELI BLÜTH AS A CONRAD SCHOLAR1 Stefan Zabierowski The University of Silesia, Katowice Abstract: The aim of the present article is to present the achievements of Rafał Marceli Blüth (1891-1939) in the fi eld of Conrad scholarship. During the period between the First and Second World Wars, Blüth was a prominent Catholic intellectual and—along with Prof. Józef Ujejski and the well-known writer Maria Dąbrowska—was one of Poland’s foremost Conrad critics. As well as interpreting Conrad’s novels, Blüth researched the writer’s biography, particularly with regard to the role played by family tradition in the Polish eastern borderlands. He also put forward a de- tailed interpretation of the factors which might have infl uenced Conrad’s decision to leave Poland while he was still in his teens. Blüth’s greatest achievements as a literary critic include interpreta- tions of novels such as Victory, The Rover and Nostromo, an attempt to classify the main charac- ters of Conrad’s novels and a study comparing Conrad’s writing and view of the world with those of Dostoevsky. Keywords: Rafał Marceli Blüth, Polish Conrad scholarship between the wars, Joseph Conrad’s biography, Joseph Conrad’s writing, Joseph Conrad’s novels Anyone who has but a cursory knowledge of the history of commentaries on the writing and biography of Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski in his partitioned homeland can say without a doubt that the fi rst Polish manifestations of interest in Conrad date back to the 1890s.
    [Show full text]
  • Critical Responses: 1950-1975
    Critical Responses: 1950-1975 Following his positioning as a major English novelist by F.R. Leavis in The Great Tradition (1948), Conrad became a central figure in academic literary criticism in the 1950s and 1960s with the publication of a series of seminal works on the writer. With studies by Thomas Moser, Albert Guerard and Edward Said, the period saw the beginning of the Conrad industry in international academe, with several biographies undertaken or written and the hunt for every possible scrap of extant Conradiana under way. This resulted in societies and journals dedicated to Conrad’s life and works in the USA, Britain, France, and Poland, the first steps in the daunting but now completed collected letters of Conrad, and a stubbornly unassailable interpretation of Conrad’s literary career, captured in the title of Thomas Moser’s influential Joseph Conrad: Achievement and Decline (1957). The period between 1950-75 also saw groundbreaking work on Conrad by Polish scholar Zdzisaw Najder, and with the unprecedented attention given to his life and works by gifted international scholars, these years constitute a true golden age of Conrad criticism. In the aftermath of WW2, philosophical and political criticism, conscious of the catastrophic results of nationalist and supremacist ideologies throughout the world, adopted Conrad as a writer transcending national boundaries, one representative of a sceptical voice on international politics. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), ‘written against a background of both reckless optimism and reckless despair’ (Arendt, p. vii), isolated ‘Heart of Darkness’ as ‘the most illuminating work on actual race experience in Africa’ (Arendt, p.
    [Show full text]
  • Heart Darkness
    The Connell Guide to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness by Graham Bradshaw Contents Introduction 4 Why does Marlow lie to the Intended? 102 A summary of the plot 5 What is so distinctive about Conrad’s view of the world? 113 What is Heart of Darkness about? 10 How important is the narrator, Marlow? 20 NOTES Why do great critics like F.R.Leavis think Heart of Darkness is flawed? 26 At a glance: Conrad’s major works 8 Is Heart of Darkness racist? 12 When and how does Marlow’s “world of Heart of Darkness and America 18 straighforward facts” break down? 38 Beerbohm’s parody 27 What makes Marlow come to put his Feminist assaults 29 faith in Kurtz? 50 The primary narrator 30 Ivory 34 How does Marlow learn the truth about Kurtz? 56 Niggers 46 Ten facts about Heart of Darkness 64 How does Marlow think of the jungle? 68 Conrad, Hardy and pessimism 86 Fin-de-siècle 114 So what is “it”? 75 A short chronology 126 What does Kurtz mean by “The horror! Bibliography 128 The horror!”? 84 How significant is Marlow’s breakdown? 96 Introduction Adolf Hitler, and Francis Ford Coppola who turned it into the film Apocalypse Now. Conrad finished Heart of Darkness on 9th February, More critical attention has probably been paid 1899 and it was originally published in three parts to it, per word, than to any other modern prose in that important organ of Victorian high culture, work. It has also become a text about which, as the Blackwood’s Magazine, Part One appearing in the late Frank Kermode once complained, interpreters 1,000th issue.
    [Show full text]
  • 2-Łamanie (11).Indd
    Yearbook of Conrad Studies (Poland) Vol. 11 2016, pp. 111–120 RECLAIMING CONRAD IN POLAND REVIEWS OF: JOSEPH CONRAD A POLSKA [JOSEPH CONRAD AND POLAND], VOL. I, 2011, PP. 367, AND POLSKOŚĆ I EUROPEJSKOŚĆ W JOSEPHA CONRADA WIZJACH HISTORII, POLITYKI I ETYKI [POLISHNESS AND EUROPEANISM IN JOSEPH CONRAD’S VISION OF HISTORY, POLITICS AND ETHICS], VOL. II, 2013, PP. 324 (ED. WIESŁAW KRAJKA, LUBLIN: MARIA CURIE-SKŁODOWSKA UNIVERSITY PRESS) Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech University of Silesia Known worldwide and published since 1992, Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives series―edited by Wiesław Krajka―has become a valuable and incisive contribution to Conrad scholarship. The series has both raised novel issues and re- examined the old ones. It has published selected papers from the prestigious interna- tional Conrad conferences organized by Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin and Kazimierz Dolny every fi ve years. The aim of the series has not only been to emphasise the Polish and East-Central European contexts for the works of Joseph Conrad, but also to present those in an international perspective (Krajka, I: 11). The thematic variety of the series can only be matched by its critical diversity: the es- says―grounded in diverse intellectual traditions and cultural backgrounds―repre- sent various methodologies and take diff erent approaches to Conrad’s life and oeuvre as well as to the reception and comparative criticism of his works. As yet, articles and studies on Conrad published in Polish are rather hard to come by. Hence the impor- tance of the new series titled Joseph Conrad a Polska, Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia i świat [Joseph Conrad and Poland, Central and Eastern Europe and the world]―ini- tiated by Wiesław Krajka and based on the texts previously published in English in the twenty two volumes of the mother-series Conrad: Eastern and Western Perspectives―can hardly be overestimated.
    [Show full text]
  • Paper XI: the 20Th Century Unit I Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
    1 Paper XI: The 20th Century Unit I Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness 1. Background 2. Plot Overview 3. Summary and Analysis 4. Character Analysis 5. Stylistic Devices of the Novel 6. Study Questions 7. Suggested Essay Topics 8. Suggestions for Further Reading 9. Bibliography Structure 1. Background 1.1 Introduction to the Author Joseph Conrad, one of the English language's greatest stylists, was born Teodor Josef Konrad Nalecz Korzenikowski in Podolia, a province of the Polish Ukraine. Poland had been a Roman Catholic kingdom since 1024, but was invaded, partitioned, and repartitioned throughout the late eighteenth-century by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. At the time of Conrad's birth (December 3, 1857), Poland was one-third of its size before being divided between the three great powers; despite the efforts of nationalists such as Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who led an unsuccessful uprising 2 in 1795, Poland was controlled by other nations and struggled for independence. When Conrad was born, Russia effectively controlled Poland. Conrad's childhood was largely affected by his homeland's struggle for independence. His father, Apollo Korzeniowski, belonged to the szlachta, a hereditary social class comprised of members of the landed gentry; he despised the Russian oppression of his native land. At the time of Conrad's birth, Apollo's land had been seized by the Russian government because of his participation in past uprisings. He and one of Conrad's maternal uncles, Stefan Bobrowski, helped plan an uprising against Russian rule in 1863. Other members of Conrad's family showed similar patriotic convictions: Kazimirez Bobrowski, another maternal uncle, resigned his commission in the army (controlled by Russia) and was imprisoned, while Robert and Hilary Korzeniowski, two fraternal uncles, also assisted in planning the aforementioned rebellion.
    [Show full text]
  • Idle Attentions: Modern Fiction and the Dismissal of Distraction By
    Idle Attentions: Modern Fiction and the Dismissal of Distraction By Marianne Felicity Kaletzky A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Francine Masiello, Chair Professor D.A. Miller Professor Anne-Lise François Professor Catherine Flynn Fall 2018 © Marianne Felicity Kaletzky 2018 All rights reserved. 1 Abstract Idle Attentions: Modern Fiction and the Dismissal of Distraction by Marianne Felicity Kaletzky Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professor Francine Masiello, Chair My dissertation challenges a long critical tradition that regards distraction as the default state of the modern subject. I argue that, far from leading inevitably to distraction, the culture of industrial capitalism trained individuals to treat their own attention as a scarce resource. Distraction, in this framework, was recast as a form of imprudent squandering. By bringing original analyses of the history of science and political theory to bear on four quintessentially distracted novels, I demonstrate that these texts’ unfocused form constitutes itself in opposition to an ever more ubiquitous demand for productive attention. In these novels, I reveal, distraction appears not as the necessary outgrowth of modern life, but as an increasingly marginalized cognitive mode. Contemporary discussions of distraction tend to follow a narrative first established by critics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who saw it as a condition both endemic to and emblematic of their age. If reactionary writers like Max Nordau denounced distraction as a symptom of the modern individual’s weak willpower, Marxists like Theodor Adorno saw it as a lamentable consequence of the proliferation of the commodity form.
    [Show full text]
  • Conrad's Modern Nomads
    The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of English CONRAD’S MODERN NOMADS A Thesis in English by Sevda Altinkaynak Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May, 2005 The thesis of Sevda Altinkaynak was reviewed and approved* by the following: Sanford Schwartz Assoc. Professor of English Thesis Advisor Chair of Committee John Harwood Assoc. Professor of English Linda Woodbridge Professor of English Abdullah Yavas Professor of Business Administration Robert Caserio Professor of English Head of the Department of English *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Conrad juxtaposes Western culture with its native counterpart in order to formulate a vision that can guide the alienated individual who has lost his connection with his own nature, his family, and his society. Unlike many of his contemporaries who only describe this miserable human condition, Conrad offers guidance to rehabilitate the individual. His presentation of Western and native cultures focuses on their practices of cultural ritual, game, and gender relationships. His target is the Western mind, which needs to be decolonized by being reminded of the fundamental equality of all human beings. Once such a bond between the white and the native is established, each can learn and benefit from one another. His heroes who have come to accept the fundamental equality of all human beings are capable of achieving peace and tranquility in their lives. As a result of their interactions with the natives they are able to cherish a sense of belonging and sharing that can repair the damage caused by their painful experience of alienation.
    [Show full text]
  • The Nature of the Symbolism in Conrad's Nostromo
    Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. THE NATURE OF THE SYMBOLISM IN CONRAD ' S NOSTROMO A thesis presente d in partial fulfilme nt of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University. Heather G. Baigent 1978 the Father Michael about this r e d time of the white terror equals the old regime and Margaret is the social revolution while cake s me an the party funds and dear thank you signifie s national gratitude Jame s Joyce: Finne gans Wake, p. 116 CONTENTS Page No. Abstract l Introduction iii I Symbolism: Some Ge n eral Comments 1 II Chiefly a Re futation 14 III Some Symbolic Aspe cts in Nostromo 39 Conclusion 59 Bibliography i Abstract: Conrad's writing is frequ e ntly d escribe d as symbolic, but few critics agree on the application of this term. The re are those critics who ide ntify Conrad with the French Symbolist poets and discuss his works only with reference to the essence, the ideal and the general , ignoring the literal, the experience level, and avoiding all mention of the narrative in which the symbolism is based. And there are those who pick out particulars from thenarrative and match them up with a series of one-to-one correspond ences, thus missing the general and universal implications.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Koryta Interviews Dean Koontz MICHAEL: in the New Novel
    Michael Koryta Interviews Dean Koontz MICHAEL: In the new novel, ODD APOCALYPSE, you write that "between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries." That statement could be a guiding light for the ODD series, and perhaps even your work in general of late. Was allowing the laughs to join the darkness a conscious decision? DEAN: Humor began to enter my work as far back as WATCHERS (1987), and by LIGHTNING (1988), my agent and publisher at that time became alarmed and counseled me that suspense and humor never mix. They were not able to offer a cogent explanation of why the two never mix. One of my favorite films of all time is NORTH BY NORTHWEST, which is tense and funny; so I just kept doing what I was doing. By the time I moved to Bantam Books with FEAR NOTHING (1998), humor became the binding glue in all of my books except for THE TAKING, VELOCITY, THE HUSBAND, and YOUR HEART BELONGS TO ME. Odd Thomas is speaking for me when he says, "Humanity is a parade of fools, and I'm right up front with a baton." Odd is a spiritual guy, and in my experience, genuinely spiritual people--as opposed to those for whom faith is either a crutch or a bludgeon--have a great sense of humor. They recognize that our fallen world is not just tragic but also absurd, often hilariously absurd, and that laughing at humanity's hubris and reckless transgressive behavior is a potent way to deny legitimacy to that hubris.
    [Show full text]