Conrad, Faulkner, and the Problem of Nonsense by Maurice Ebileeni (review)
TL;DR: The Impossible Joyce: Finnegans Wakes as discussed by the authors is a meta-analysis of the linguistic sign, in Joyce's use of language and its translatability alike, in a text-based analysis whose scholarly excellence may be contrasted with outcomes of current trends of compilations of positivist contexts.
Abstract: close readers of Finnegans Wake and its translations have to cope with a paradox indicated in the title of O’Neill’s study: if they engage in a structuralist quest for ultimate signification in terms of differentiating binary oppositions, they are doomed to make “impossible” choices. Even if not explicitly stated, Impossible Joyce thus turns out to be a metaanalysis of the linguistic sign, in Joyce’s use of language and its translatability alike. What at first sight seems to be a rather old-fashioned New-Critical study turns out to be a close reading which elucidates multiple layers of undiscovered meanings in full awareness of the poststructuralist limitations of its heuristic framework. Thus, Impossible Joyce: Finnegans Wakes is not only a text-based analysis whose scholarly excellence may be contrasted with outcomes of current trends of compilations of positivist contexts; it is a study which fuses some of the best insights of old-school and cutting-edge criticism.
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01 Jan 1984
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study the study of plot notes in the context of reading for the plot, and they propose a model for narrative understanding based on Freud's Masterplot.
Abstract: Preface 1. Reading for the Plot 2. Narrative Desire 3. The Novel and the Guillotine, or Fathers and Sons in Le Rouge et le noir 4. Freud's Masterplot: A Model for Narrative 5. Repetition, Repression, and Return: The Plotting of Great Expectations 6. The Mark of the Beast: Prostitution, Serialization, and Narrative 7. Retrospective Lust, or Flaubert's Perversities 8. Narrative Transaction and Transference 9. An Unreadable Report: Conrad's Heart of Darkness 10. Fictions of the Wolf Man: Freud and Narrative Understanding 11. Incredulous Narration: Absalom, Absalom! In Conclusion: Endgames and the Study of Plot Notes
1,111 citations
815 citations
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01 Jan 1911
TL;DR: Under Western Eyes (1911) as mentioned in this paper traces a sequence or error, guilt, and expiation in a sequence of human dilemmas which are born of oppression and violence.
Abstract: Under Western Eyes traces a sequence or error, guilt, and expiation. Its composition placed such demands upon Conrad that he suffered a serious breakdown upon its completion. It is by common critical consent one of his finest achievements. Bomb-throwing assassins, political repression and revolt, emigre revolutionaries infiltrated by a government spy: much of Under Western Eyes (1911) is more topical than we might wish. Set in tsarist Russia and in Geneva, its concern with perennial issues of human responsibility gives it a lasting moral force. The contradictory demands placed upon men and women by the social and political convulsions of the modern age have never been more revealingly depicted. Joseph Conrad personally felt no sympathy with either Russians or revolutionaries. None the less his portrayal of both in Under Western Eyes is dispassionate and disinterested. Through the Western eyes of his narrator we are given a sombre but not entirely pessimistic view of the human dilemmas which are born of oppression and violence.
383 citations