Conrad and Narrative Theory: A Narratological Reading of Selected Novels of Joseph Conrad Vali Gholami Royal Holloway College PhD in English University of London 2013 1 DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP I, Vali Gholami, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is clearly stated. Signed: __________________________________ Date: ____________________________________ 2 Abstract This thesis is a narratological reading of selected novels of Joseph Conrad from different periods of his creative career (early, middle and late). Chapter One establishes the theoretical framework of the thesis, reviewing relevant narrative theory in its pre-narratological, classical and postclassical phases. Chapter Two shows how Conrad‘s taking advantage of distance and focalisation makes Almayer‟s Folly a first novel which is not only an adventure novel but also a critique of European imperialism. Chapter Three examines Lord Jim as a self- subverting narrative by using the postmodern narratology of Patrick O‘Neill and Lyotard‘s grand and local narratives. The authoritative ―extradiegetic‖ narrative of the first narrator is challenged by the ―homodiegetic‖ narrative of Marlow which in turn is challenged by a marathon of ―hypodiegetic‖ local narratives putting any kind of established principle in flux. Chapter Four deals with the often neglected role of the ―extradiegetic‖ narrator as the controller of the narrative discourse of The Secret Agent and the unifying agent in the management of diegesis, dialogue and time in this novel. Chapter Five takes advantage of James Phelan‘s rhetorical narratology to examine the problems of interpretation in Under Western Eyes as a self-conscious ‗stubborn text‘. With tools provided by this approach, the different texts of Conrad, the narrator and Razumov are examined. Furthermore, under the light of such a problematic text, the ethics of writing and reading are discussed. Chapter Six examines the iceberg principle in The Rover: it shows how the interconnection of setting, character and mind turns an apparently simple narrative into a highly complex and suggestive text. 3 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Robert Hampson, who patiently guided me by his vision, encouragement and advice to go through the challenging journey of completing this PhD dissertation. I would also like to thank the English Department of Royal Holloway especially Professor Judith Hawley, head of research students, for all the support and training sessions they arranged to improve our research skills. I would also like to thank the Joseph Conrad Society (UK) with whom I discussed things Conradian during the completion of this thesis. Last but not least, I wish to thank my parents and family who provided me with their support and inspiration from a long distance. I owe them everything and wish I could show them how much I love and appreciate them. My deepest gratitude also goes to my wife whose love, support and encouragement allowed me to finish this journey. I would like to dedicate this work to her. 4 CONTENTS Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Narrative Theory 20 Chapter 2: Distance and Focalisation in Almayer‟s Folly 109 Chapter 3: Self-Subverting Narrative in Lord Jim 149 Chapter 4: The Narrator and the Management of Diegesis, Dialogue and Time in The Secret Agent 205 Chapter 5: ‗Stubborn Text‘ and the Problems of Interpretation in Under Western Eyes 289 Chapter 6: Narrative and Mind: The Iceberg Principle in The Rover 343 Conclusion 368 Bibliography 372 5 Introduction Edward Said rightly said that a Conrad tale was great not only for its ―representation‖ but also for its ―presentation‖.1 This sums up how Conradian criticism has evolved from the early days of the publication of Almayer‟s Folly to the present time. Though much of the earlier criticism, and even the later, is concerned with thematic studies, since the 1980s, when narratology was introduced into the English speaking world, Conrad has often been a favourite subject for narratological readings. The reason being that not only did Conrad write complex narratives, welcoming narratological analyses by their nature, he was also, as Lothe, Hawthorn and Phelan say, ―the major narrative theorist‖.2 These critics further maintain that Conrad is engaged with issues of narratology in two ways. Firstly, ―Conrad peppers his tales with comments on their status as narratives − on their mode of delivery, the situation of the telling, the response of listeners and readers, and other issues.‖3 Secondly, Conrad takes advantage of sharp disjunctions between story and narrative discourse, ―disjunctions that go hand in hand with his use of innovative temporalities and plots. He often involves multiple agents in the narrative transmission. Such transmissions involve experiments with narrative frames and embedding as well as with audiences‖. They further argue that Conrad also ―draws on the discourses of multiple levels of society that create the kind of heteroglossia that Mikhail Bakhtin regards as essential to the power of the novel as a genre.‖ Additionally, they maintain, ―Conrad deploys the conventions of multiple genres, including such broad ones as fiction and history and 6 such slightly narrower ones as sketch and tragedy.‖4 These are important characteristics of Conradian narrative. Regarding their first point, Under Western Eyes is a good example. When the narrator is justifying his objectivity in rendering Razumov‘s story based on the diary that the character left after himself, the reader feels he is reading a treatise on narrative theory rather than fiction. Thus, for example, commenting on the diary the narrator says: ―All the earlier part is in a retrospect, in a narrative form, relating to an event which took place about a year before‖.5 Lord Jim, with its marathon of local narratives which creates a sharp contrast between its story and narrative discourse as well as its framing and multiple narrators is a good example for their second point. However, works written prior to the advent of narratology in the 1980s are more or less concerned with thematic studies. Nonetheless, even in these studies, there are concerns with Conrad‘s narrative method. F. R. Leavis, for instance, who was influential in introducing Conrad into the tradition of the English novel, disapproved of the Marlow tales (―Heart of Darkness‖ and Lord Jim) maintaining that the shift of narrators from extradiegetic to the personal narration of Marlow ―cheapen[s] the tone‖ of these works. In Leavis‘s view, Conrad tries ―to impose on his readers and on himself, for thrilled response, ‗significance‘ that is merely an emotional insistence on the presence of what he can‘t produce‖.6 It is for these reasons that Leavis dismisses the Marlow tales in comparison to The Secret Agent and Nostromo, which he ranks as Conrad‘s best. Another early critic, Dorothy Van Ghent, by contrast, finds the narrative method of Lord Jim contributing to the thematics of the novel when she examines Marlow‘s treatment of Jim‘s jump from 7 the Patna. She argues that Conrad‘s ―use of reflector within reflector, point of view within point of view, cross-chronological juxtaposition of events and impressions‖ shows Conrad‘s ―extreme ethical scrupulosity‖ to present the truth about Jim.7 Most of the commentators who try to examine Conrad‘s fiction through a narratological analysis refer to ―Heart of Darkness‖. Diana Knight, for instance, uses Gerard Genette‘s model of narratology to deal with the narrators employed in ―Heart of Darkness‖. She rightly argues that the Genettian terminology, ―extradiegetic‖ and ―intradiegetic‖, is useful to specify the different narrators of the text.8 Another account of Joseph Conrad and narratology appears in Peter Brooks‘s Reading for the Plot (1984). Brooks combines structuralism, narratology and psychoanalysis to give his own reading of ―Heart of Darkness‖. Brooks uses the pre- narratological terms of fabula and sjuzet which were coined by the Russian Formalists and are usually translated as story and discourse (or plot) by English narratologists.9 However, Brooks realises that this dyad of the Russian Formalists cannot do full justice to the narrative method of ―Heart of Darkness‖. Therefore, he includes Genette who adds narration to the dyad. Genette‘s term is useful for Brooks since it helps him to say that narration is ―the level at which narratives sometimes dramatize the means and agency (real or fictive) of their telling‖.10 This inclusion gives Brooks the tools to consider the functions narration plays in ―Heart of Darkness‖. Brooks argues that the narrative method of the novella, employing an extradiegetic narrator who frames the intradiegetic narration of Marlow, addressed to 8 his narratees on the Nellie, makes this text a sort of detective story through which Marlow attempts to solve the mystery encompassing Kurtz‘s story. Allan H. Simmons is among the first critics who brought narratological analysis to Conrad‘s fiction. Unlike others who applied narratological analysis to Marlow tales (especially ―Heart of Darkness‖) since these tales had framed narratives which respond well to classical narratology, Simmons‘s first attempt (―Ambiguity as Meaning: The Subversion of Suspense in Almayer‟s Folly, 1989) deals with Conrad‘s narrative management in his first published novel. As I will discuss in Chapter Two, Simmons examines achronological plot progression and its effects on the thematics of the novel. In his second attempt, Simmons revisits Almayer‟s Folly, this time examining focalisation as a technical means by which Conrad depicts the clash between the Europeans and the natives, creating opposing viewpoints of which the non-European‘s is the victorious.11 The first published monograph wholly devoted specifically to Conrad‘s experimentations with narrative is Jakob Lothe‘s Conrad‟s Narrative Method (1989). In this systematic study of Conradian narrative, Lothe applies the then recent developments in critical theory and practice to the whole canon of Conrad‘s fiction.