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

Jameson shows how the difference between to the novel’s two parts itself creates
epistemological complexity. For example, whether we are interpreting the character
of Jim as a cultural commodity or as a “real” person within the world projected by the
text, we must interpret him as the product of these two separate genres, just as
Marlow does—as both the “ideal” romantic Jim of Patusan and the mystery of the
Patna. The result is either more mystery—how can two such different people be
one?—or a complex, fragmentary view of character. That is, once we read the novel
as composed of two parts with differing poetics, genres, or approaches to the
challenges of capitalism, we are inevitably presented with the epistemological
problems associated with modernism.
It is worth noting that Jameson’s division of the novel between modernism
and wish-fulfilling romance is not necessarily followed, even by other critics who
note the middle as a site of generic transformation. For Robert Hampson, Lord Jim
does not divide into high culture and low culture genres, but two mass-culture genres:
“It is now generally accepted that Conrad structures the narrative of Lord Jim by
reference to light literature: in the first part of the novel, he produces a counterversion
of the sea-life romance; in the second part of the novel, in Patusan, he recreates
the colonial world of adventure romance” (129). The echoes of the contrast
between modernism and mass culture or postmodernism remain only in the contrast
between a counter-version and a re-creation. For Lissa Schneider, however, gender is
the key difference: “Structurally, Lord Jim does divide into two distinct parts: the
‘masculine’ sea tale of Jim’s experiences aboard the Patna and the ‘feminine’
domestic drama detailing his romance with Jewel and his self-imposed banishment to
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