ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

Jim’s actions within a causal narrative system. As I shall argue, there are better
candidates for this function than Marlow’s oral narrative.
In addition to the search for a middle that re-configures the text’s central
epistemological concerns, I have stated a preference for centers when searching for a
modernist middle—smaller segments of text that are roughly equivalent to a segment
of text that we may think of as a beginning or ending. A long middle like Marlow’s
oral narrative very easily becomes an Aristotelian or Millerian middle: everything
between beginning and end. In this context, the beginning becomes a frame, setting
up the background for the story, and the written narrative an epilogue, informing us of
Jim’s death and providing a certain degree of plot closure. Indeed, Marlow’s oral
story is a complete story within the narrative level that it occupies. Marlow’s oral
narrative has some of the characteristics of a modernist middle, and we should not
completely dismiss it as such, but it would be better to search for a smaller section of
text that nevertheless provides a strong transition in the way the novel approaches the
epistemological problems surrounding the mystery of Jim: that is, the transition from
Jim’s peripatetic life at sea to his life on Patusan. This transition has the added benefit
of being a more traditional narrative middle, similar to some Victorian texts: there is a
significant change in the protagonist’s circumstances which moves the plot in the
direction of its ending. While it is possible to separate modernist narrative middles
from Victorian or other plot-based narrative middles, it would perhaps be best to
avoid this sort of complication in favor of a single narrative middle, which may have
both traditional and modernist aspects.
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