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Beyond the Bildungsroman: character development and communal legitimation in the early fiction of Joseph Conrad.(Critical essay)

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From: Conradiana
Date: 20070622
Author:Boes, Tobias

In what sense could "Tuan" Jim be said to have been "one of us"? (Lord passim). Marlow's sudden appearance in the fifth chapter of Lord Jim derails the form of what had previously seemed a conventional novel of disillusionment, and yet is motivated by nothing more than the urgency of his claim. It seems plausible to read into this urgency the repressed anxiety of an author whose relationship to his self-chosen national community remained open to question throughout his life, who after fifteen years in the most British of all professions still felt that his ability to pass for an ...