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基本説明
As a trilingual Polish expatriate, Conrad brought a formidable liguistic self-consciousness to the English novel and tensions between speech and writing are the defining obsessions of his career.
Full 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.
Contents
Introduction; Part 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; Part II. Marlow: 4. Modernist storytelling: 'Youth' and 'Heart of Darkness'; 5. The scandals of Lord Jim; 6. The gender of Chance; Part 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; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.