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

the isolated community of Patusan” (109). Schneider’s emphasis here is on what
Marlow calls “the story of his love,” that is, Jim’s love for Jewel, that begins in the
middle of Chapter 26. Marlow is indeed insistent on this generic designation, telling
his audience in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of Chapter 31, “Remember
this is a love story I am telling you now” (Conrad 177). Generic designation justifies
the description of “a beautiful night” (177). Both of these interpretations, like
Jameson’s, are plausible. Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that Lord Jim is a
generic hybrid throughout, including the Polish literary tradition and Medieval
Romance (Pospiech 57). However, it seems obvious from both the critical history and
my own reading that these generic influences are re-configured at the novel’s middle.
The particular genre of each of the parts of the novel is less important to my approach
than the fact of this difference, which produces a unity out of contradiction. It seems
to me, based on this variety of readings, that neither beginning or ending is able to
gain priority as the ultimate arbiter of meaning in Lord Jim. Instead, the framework
by which the novel is interpreted is displaced onto the middle, onto the division itself,
creating a sort of epistemological uncertainty that extends from the true nature of Jim,
which is Marlow’s concern, to the generic framework by which the novel itself
should be read. This framework—which guides both plot and interpretation—is not
simply hybrid or multiple, but specifically divided, fragmented, thus foregrounding
the problems of making sense of Lord Jim both as narrative and as cultural-political
object.
Differences in genre are not merely implicit, but also explicit in the text. The
“love story” genre in particular suggests that the novel is composed of multiple
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