Search for Meaning through the written Word: a discussion of Narrative Methods and their relationship to the Search for Self in Joseph Conrad's Nostromo and Under Western Eyes

Abstract

<p>The primary focus of this thesis will be a formal analysis of narrative methods in Joseph Conrad's <em>Nostromo</em> and <em>Under Western Eyes</em>. Conrad develops the search for an understanding of individual character and selfhood through narrative approaches that self-consciously reflect the thematic and moral tensions in the novels. The metaphysics of alienation on the level of fictional characters are echoed by the epistemological and linguistic scepticism of self-subversive narrative frameworks: the reader's "moral universe" and access to reality are implicitly questioned by the problematic tripartite relationship between characters, the storytellers and shifting degrees of authorial omniscience.</p> <p>My approach to Conrad combines Bakhtinian critical theory with insights from the theories of Jacques Lacan, whose redefinition of the science of psychoanalysis as a linguistics provides a fascinating analytical framework within which to examine tensions between artistic creativity and the subjective search for meaning through communication.</p>