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

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for interpreting his own life and the meaning of his actions—to replace the professional code of conduct that shaped interpretations of Jim’s actions in the first part of the novel (Baxter 112). Stein provides in Patusan, then, a setting that as closely as possible mirrors romantic adventure narrative—sets Jim up to play a prescribed role in a pre-determined narrative. In this sense, Stein actively creates the shift in the novel’s genre. Stein attempts to remove the framework of professionalism that, when combined with Jim’s actions failure on the Patna, resulted in the epistemologically-dominant modernist narrative of the novel’s first half. Yet, this new romantic framework ultimately results in more epistemological problems, as it cannot be completely isolated from the rest of Lord Jim. Furthermore, as Baxter shows, Stein only succeeds in putting a separate code of conduct—and thus a separate narrative framework—into conflict with the facts of Jim’s life: “If Jim undermines for Marlow the strength of shared ‘fidelity to a certain standard of conduct’ for the merchant marine in the first part of the novel, he finally undermines the power of fidelity to a certain romantic egoism in the second part of the novel. Jim fails the test of each, the practical and the romantic” (Baxter 115). Stein’s narrative middle re-frames Jim, from failed professional to striving ego, arresting one story at the middle and asserting a new one. Yet these stories have a common modernist interest in the inadequacy of these narrative frameworks to produce narratives that satisfactorily embed events in a system of causality and meaning. As Bruss notes, the prominence of Stein in the critical literature derives not only from his active role in shifting Lord Jim’s narrative genre, but also in part from his position at the center of the narrative text (Bruss 502). That is, the narrative 59
middle as I have defined it—a segment of text or transitional moment close to the literal center of the text—has a certain amount of priority in terms of guiding interpretation of a text that may not generally rise to the level of beginning or ending, but is nevertheless greater than the long middle that includes all text between beginning and ending, or other locations of narrative segmentation, such as the end of the Patna episode. This middle of the novel is also the center of the plot: “the Stein interview comes at the structural centre of Lord Jim: Stein is sought out by Marlow in a final attempt to find a genuine solution to Jim’s problem, and the interview immediately promotes the Patusan venture which constitutes the second half of the novel” (Lothe 162). It is also the middle in the sense that it moves us from a narrative focused on beginnings—the Patna episode, its mysteries, its meanings, as the driving narrative force—to a narrative focused on ends—the Patusan episode, Jim’s actions, Jim’s fate. 5 Stein’s words, partaking of Biblical narrative, mark this shift, though the remarks refer to Stein’s own adventurous past: “That was the way. To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream—and so—ewig—usque ad finem” (Conrad 130). The repetition here echoes Jim’s wanderings, but, while Jim’s movements had been motivated by flight—escaping from what was behind him—Stein demands a life motivated by what is ahead—the unattainable end. However, Chapter 20 has its concern with middles as well. Soon after he has identified Jim as a romantic, Stein announces a “cure” from the self (Conrad 128). Marlow responds, “the question is not how to get cured, but how to live,” which 5 Watt writes, “In the first nineteen chapters, Conrad’s narrative focus tended to centre our attention on Marlow’s discussions with Jim, rather than on Jim himself. [...] This changes completely with Stein; events, characters, themes, and narrative devices all converge to propel Lord Jim into a single and unchecked forward movement to its end” (305). 60
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ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH
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BRITISH MODERNIST NARRATIVE MIDDLES
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Dedication To my wife Pat, my disse
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Table of Contents Dedication ......
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necessarily after anything else, an
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eginning. That is, a modernist midd
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and Mario Ortiz-Robles have brought
Page 15 and 16: Princess Casamassima. The former is
Page 17 and 18: choice of McHale’s definition is
Page 19 and 20: In examining modernist middles, I w
Page 21 and 22: “is to overlook the other fundame
Page 23 and 24: evolution of capitalism strikes me
Page 25 and 26: spatial and temporal confines. On t
Page 27 and 28: narratives in Beckett’s Molloy, c
Page 29 and 30: Johnson mark an end to Britain’s
Page 31 and 32: period somewhat peripheral, a parti
Page 33 and 34: is oriented around endings (Jim’s
Page 35 and 36: eal world, yet the novel explores i
Page 37: Ulysses, the second half of In Tran
Page 40 and 41: Modernist texts may also contain mi
Page 42 and 43: chapters), and the end as Marlow’
Page 44 and 45: potentially be used to highlight ep
Page 46 and 47: middle) of the veracity of the Time
Page 48 and 49: Jim’s actions within a causal nar
Page 50 and 51: to Patusan midway through the novel
Page 52 and 53: violation of the unity of action, b
Page 54 and 55: which mass culture will be articula
Page 56 and 57: Jameson shows how the difference be
Page 58 and 59: genres, connected by multiple middl
Page 60 and 61: it does in Jameson’s reading. How
Page 62 and 63: text, since only a vast rupture req
Page 64 and 65: actually see Jim make the deal with
Page 68 and 69: garners an enthusiastic response fr
Page 70 and 71: circular encasement, which has the
Page 72 and 73: text’s initial questions are begi
Page 74 and 75: Chapter 2: Modernist Points of View
Page 76 and 77: it seems that the marriage plot is
Page 78 and 79: centering his novels within his pro
Page 80 and 81: singular, centered focalization—a
Page 82 and 83: inn. The lovers will return to Char
Page 84 and 85: consciousness itself seems to contr
Page 86 and 87: created, in part, by the use of mul
Page 88 and 89: epistemological problem: how do the
Page 90 and 91: observation leads immediately and i
Page 92 and 93: ineffectiveness” (Kafalenos 125).
Page 94 and 95: shall have everything’” (266).
Page 96 and 97: can to the sheer unspeakable narrat
Page 98 and 99: induce me” (277). Fanny, then, re
Page 100 and 101: and the objective world. Instead, M
Page 102 and 103: ‘Sure. Nothing will. Good-night,
Page 104 and 105: It was not till many days had passe
Page 106 and 107: which a story unfolds, and perhaps
Page 108 and 109: When Amerigo arrives, Maggie’s co
Page 110 and 111: accomplish, who she will meet, what
Page 112 and 113: Chapter 3: “Time Passes”: The M
Page 114 and 115: narrative force towards modernist m
Page 116 and 117:
Even as “Time Passes” serves an
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technique of modernist narrative, b
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ground of any rival solutions to Li
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summary and scene” (Genette, Narr
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Window,” and the ending section,
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presentation in “Time Passes.”
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where things happen. Events are mad
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has promised James that they will g
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For Lucio Ruotolo, however, this na
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eginning, middle, and end together
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integral to the musical and dramati
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spring from the narrative problem o
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who creates a mind for inanimate ob
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own thoughts nor that of any charac
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language, and thus subject to the c
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Lighthouse,” and narrations of th
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in so far as her presence helps the
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anthropomorphizing narrative—but
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In the initial description of summe
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they find “something out of harmo
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upper rooms of the empty house only
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like to be up here at dusk alone ne
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armistice, but it follows so immedi
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y the narrator, allow a world unpop
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Furthermore, passages like this fun
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(“narrated monologue”) as “a
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Mrs. McNab and Mrs. Bast are arguab
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unclear whether time flows forward,
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conventions of modernist and tradit
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middle by making itself markedly di
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Lighthouse’s primary narrative pa
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served to marginalize experimental
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the author’s other novels. Alick
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himself. In an episode that resembl
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unity between time story time and n
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accept the lying perspective as par
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cause and which effect. Any attempt
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died on October, 1938” (7). Frobi
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middle of fundamental change; the u
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However, like the stories Macmann a
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which takes Saturnine to the edge o
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Aspic, to thank him for his kindnes
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Whereas Genette’s discussion of h
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problems of the self, but instead p
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sees in the faces. But here we can
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narration. Frobisher has entered a
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Frobisher is reassured both by the
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strode on. He said, with his eyes n
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analyze mental states from outside
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journey up. But meaning emanates fr
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death vision, in which life is self
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Thus, after a tile falls from the r
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objection to realism: yes, an objec
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esulted in a doubling—or repetiti
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The ending Frobisher comes to with
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though the novel’s return to epis
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andom order. However, each memory r
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middle therefore randomizes the nov
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created by a formal device that rep
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final section resolves the scenario
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that each of the novel’s sections
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inadequate to me for such a narrati
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narratives. This fundamental differ
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turned into a thing. In fact, as Jo
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unburden the author’s memory. How
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Instead, the middle of The Unfortun
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By contrast, the second type of sec
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at both. This particular failure is
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as knowing it, as he did not know o
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had been so full-fleshed, the whole
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had talked, Tony” (“That was th
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epudiation of its own central moder
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narrator/rememberer. Johnson mainta
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etrospective, an attempt to think i
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it, welcome it) the ball spun lazil
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worn” 9-10). The image finds the
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like a miracle, though he still cou
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By contrast, when the narrator firs
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memory: a mixture of the ordered an
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Chapter 6: Indivisible Form, Divide
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ecause postmodernism concerns the n
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in the diegetic reality of the nove
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section one LINGUISTIC LEPROSY Alle
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In Transit’s musical subtitles al
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they are perched between or represe
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performative in a Butlerian sense,
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the chorus describe themselves as a
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lamentable incident which I am now
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social component of thought only th
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identity, which remains unitary and
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not an effort to give the narrator
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Novelist 33). That is, Pat-the-narr
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primarily with classifying Pat’s
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now irrelevant, replaced by the pur
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etween reader and author. When Pat
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consequences for the entire world o
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world presented to the reader in Se
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of Pat’s own life, and by forgett
Page 312 and 313:
evolutionaries find that another gr
Page 314 and 315:
However, Brophy is not entirely don
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masculinity. Its manifestations are
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to violate. In Transit’s postmode
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ontological—shifts to consider de
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However, I would argue that we read
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Conclusion Modernism and narrative
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approximately half of the narrative
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little attention in the past, littl
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Brophy, Brigid. Don’t Never Forge
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1989. 162-185. ---. “Periodizing
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Johnson, B. S. The Unfortunates. Ed
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Political in the Novels of Virginia
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Said, Edward. Beginnings: Intention
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