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" An exploration of the outsider's role in selected works by Joseph Conrad, Malcolm Lowry, V.S. Naipaul "
Park, Jong-Seong
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1092627
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TLets243585
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| Main Entry
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Park, Jong-Seong
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| Title & Author
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An exploration of the outsider's role in selected works by Joseph Conrad, Malcolm Lowry, V.S. Naipaul\ Park, Jong-Seong
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| College
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Queen Mary, University of London
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| Date
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1996
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| student score
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1996
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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This thesis explores ways in which the outsider questions rather than confirms dominant cultural values whilst avoiding the crudity of overt politicisation. I argue that the outsider's preference for an observer's stance is not so much an act which denies responsibility to the world of his day, but rather a means of reassessing its priorities. In Section One, I discuss Conrad's role as an outsider in the age of Empires. I demonstrate the ways in which Conrad employs narrators, frequently using strategies of irony which can be and have been read in very different ways. I argue that Conrad uses irony as a tool for condemnation rather than condonement of imperialist practice, if not its ideology. In Section Two, I discuss Lowry as an emigre from England (so contrasting him with Conrad, the immigrant from Europe), and examine his dissenting voice which opposes bourgeois prejudice against the working class, a totalising ideology like Fascism, and a Western rationalism which sees too rigid a distinction between sanity and madness. I demonstrate how Lowry as an outsider reacts to the age of twentieth century World Wars. In Section Three, I discuss Naipaul's role as an outsider in the age of decolonisation, when bogus liberals and false redeemers fail to rebuild the newly independent post-colonial states. As in Conrad's case, I show how a failure to read Naipaul's ironic tone of voice has given rise to radically divergent views as to what he is about. I also link Conrad and Naipaul through their cultural negotiation between the 'centre' and its peripheries. By looking at these three writers in chronological order and offering a comparative perspective on their work, I highlight the outsider's disturbing, yet illuminating role within a historical context. I also draw attention to creative tensions between artistic concerns and a serious political purpose. I assess the outsider as observer and man of conscience rather than as a` mere onlooker. I conclude that the outsider also fulfils a social obligation by promoting critical awareness on the reader's side by means of his defamiliarising perspective.
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English Literature
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| Added Entry
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Queen Mary, University of London
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