Joseph Conrad – a Pole by birth – is a writer who has exercised a very potent influence on his generation, but his impact has expanded well beyond. He has inspired English, American, African and Polish novelists and poets. One of his staunch admirers was the young English novelist, Graham Greene (1904-1991). However if Conrad’s integrity as a writer with a strong moral sense won the attention of both the reading public and many reviewers, the positive response that welcomed Greene’s first published novel The Man Within (1929) almost died out with the novels that came next, The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1931). Greene himself attributed the failure of these novels to Conrad’s ‘too great and too disastrous influence.’ Although Greene recaptured some of that praise by the remarkable craftsmanship of Stamboul Train (1932), many critics contested any claim to Greene being a leading writer of his generation, hence excluded him from the literary arena for many years. Critics were reluctant to recognize Greene’s literary worth first because they believed that he was not exactly an original writer; second, because the inclusion of religious themes in his works, while it arrested the attention of some Catholic writers, disconcerted many others.
In this comparative study of Conrad’s The Secret Agent and Greene’s It’s A Battlefield, and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Greene’s A Burnt-Out-Case, I shall attempt to investigate and elucidate what in Conrad exercised such power and fascination on Greene. The focus of interest is to try and find answers to these questions: has Greene’s vow ‘never again’ to read a novel by Conrad ‘which he kept for more than a quarter of a century’ been successful? Has Greene succeeded in writing off the ghost of Conrad? If not, do the borrowings from Conrad undermine Greene’s writings in any way?
Such study should take into account what qualities have been absorbed, what have been transmuted, what rejected. Such analysis is necessary for an understanding and evaluation of Greene’s art, not only within the English literary tradition, but also within today’s world literature.
Key Words: Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Realism, Modernism, Civilisation, Legacy,
Influence, Intertextuality, Human Nature
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part One. The Socio-Historical Context
Chapter One. The Formative Years
1.1. The Lost Childhood
1.2. Temperament and Personality
1.3. The World Arena
1.3.1. The ‘Fin de Siècle’: An Age of Dissolution
1.3.2. The First World War
The Changing Experience of Women
1.3.3. The 1920s : An Era of Revolt
Labour Unrest
1.3.4. The Thirties: The Devil’s Decade
1.3.5. The Second World War: ‘Apocalypse Now’
Chapter Two. The Literary Scene
2.1. Realism and Modernism: The Transition
2.2. The Literature of the 1930s
Part II. A World in Shambles: The Secret Agent / It’s A Battlefield
Chapter Three. Politics and Betrayal
3.1. ‘The Injustice of Men’s Justice’
3.2. Martyrs or Scapegoats?
3.3. Female Offenders
Chapter Four. The Illuminating Quality
4.1. Narrative Structure
4.2. Irony
4.3. Repetition
4.4. Imagery
Part III: ‘The Hollow Men’: Heart of Darkness/A Burnt-Out Case
Chapter Five. Paradise Lost
5.1. The Wasteland
5.1.1. Heart of Darkness as pretext
5.1.2. The Anatomy of Allusions
Heart of Darkness and A Burnt-Out-Case as Faustian Narratives
Albert Camus’s Absurd Man and Life
The Voice of T.S. Eliot
5.2. In Search of Truth
5.3. The Doppelganger
Chapter Six.‘Technique as Discovery’
6.1. Free Indirect Speech (FIS)
6.2. Appositions and Substitutions
6.3. ‘Stream-of-Consciousness’ versus Dreams
6.4. Metaphors
6.5. Similes
Research Objectives and Themes
This thesis examines the literary relationship between Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene, specifically focusing on the concept of influence as a dynamic, intertextual process of misreading and re-interpretation. The primary research goal is to investigate how Greene navigated the "anxiety of influence" caused by Conrad, and to determine whether he successfully established his own artistic identity through his thematic and stylistic borrowings and transformations of Conradian works.
- The role of intertextuality and the "anxiety of influence" in the literary legacy between Conrad and Greene.
- A comparative analysis of socio-historical contexts and the formative years of both authors.
- A detailed examination of Conrad's The Secret Agent in relation to Greene's It’s A Battlefield, focusing on politics, betrayal, and social justice.
- A thematic and stylistic study of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Greene's A Burnt-Out-Case, particularly regarding the themes of moral failure and existential alienation.
- The application of psychoanalytic and socio-critical approaches to decode the "dialogic relationship" between the authors' texts.
Excerpt from the Book
1.2. Temperament and Personality
The formative years of Conrad’s and Greene’s early life were certainly the cornerstone of their personalities. Like Conrad, Greene had a nomadic disposition. Such desire for new locales reveals a love for freedom, an insatiable character, an acute intellectual curiosity. In many ways, Greene had a Polish temperament, particularly in his love of nomadic life, which is a feature of the Polish character. From times immemorial the Slavs have been errant souls, often uprooted.1 It is therefore not surprising that Conrad found in England a way of affirming his inner tendencies.
Greene’s sensitivity, like Conrad’s, flinched from any imposed discipline. That spirit of rebellion gave birth to a spirit of adventure. Both became fascinated with geography and the desire to visit unexplored regions filled their heads. Like his predecessor, Greene visited the blank, unexplored space which has ‘the shape of the human heart’ (J.W.M, 37). As it had been for Conrad, this voyage to Africa was a voyage of self-discovery. But while Conrad returned from this continent with a heart full of hatred for life itself, Greene discovered there ‘a love for life’ (Greene). The health of both men was impaired by their African expeditions. Both returned physically and morally shattered. If Africa left a deep imprint on them so did the women they loved.
Both Conrad and Greene were influenced by women: Conrad by Dõna Rita, an immoral woman he met at a reception, and Greene by Vivien Dayrell-Browning. Louis Guillet’s description of the influence of Dõna Rita applies well to Graham Greene: [...] elle monte à la tête comme un verre de vin tourne la cervelle à un jeune homme ... Il emporte imprimée dans son coeur cette inoubliable apparition feminine. 2
Summary of Chapters
Chapter One. The Formative Years: This chapter analyzes the early lives of Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene, focusing on their shared childhood traumas and how these experiences influenced their subsequent development and literary concerns.
Chapter Two. The Literary Scene: This section situates both authors within the transition from Realism to Modernism and explores how they responded to the cultural and political shifts of the early twentieth century.
Chapter Three. Politics and Betrayal: This chapter provides a comparative study of The Secret Agent and It’s A Battlefield, examining themes of social injustice, political disillusionment, and the arbitrariness of law.
Chapter Four. The Illuminating Quality: This section investigates the stylistic devices and narrative techniques that Greene inherited from Conrad and adapted to further his own artistic purposes.
Chapter Five. Paradise Lost: This chapter explores the intertextual connections between Heart of Darkness and A Burnt-Out-Case, analyzing the themes of moral failure, the journey as self-discovery, and the "hollow man" motif.
Chapter Six.‘Technique as Discovery’: This concluding analytical chapter identifies essential aspects of the writers’ narrative methods, such as free indirect speech, metaphor, and simile, to demonstrate how these devices support their thematic development.
Keywords
Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Intertextuality, Anxiety of Influence, Modernism, Realism, Politics, Betrayal, Existentialism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Socio-criticism, Narrative Structure, Post-colonialism, Moral Landscape, The Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this thesis?
The thesis explores the intertextual legacy of Joseph Conrad in the novels of Graham Greene, investigating how Conrad's influence shaped Greene's work through a "dialogic relationship" between their texts.
What are the central thematic fields?
The work centers on themes of politics, social justice, betrayal, human nature, moral failure, and the existential condition within the context of early to mid-twentieth-century industrial society.
What is the primary research goal?
The goal is to elucidate how Greene, as a literary heir, absorbed, transmuted, or rejected Conradian themes and techniques, and to provide a revisionist reading of Greene's work to contribute to its "individuation."
Which scientific methods are employed?
The study utilizes an interdisciplinary approach, primarily relying on intertextual analysis, psychoanalytic criticism, and socio-criticism to investigate the deep connection between the authors' lives and their fictional representations.
What does the main body address?
The body is divided into three parts: a socio-historical context, a detailed comparative study of The Secret Agent and It’s A Battlefield, and an analysis of Heart of Darkness in relation to A Burnt-Out-Case.
Which keywords characterize the work?
Key terms include Intertextuality, Anxiety of Influence, Existentialism, Moral Landscape, Modernism, and Psychoanalytic Criticism.
How does the author define "influence" in the context of this study?
Following Harold Bloom, the author defines influence not as a simple transmission of ideas, but as a critical act of "misprision" or "misreading," wherein a writer actively interacts with a precursor to find his own artistic space.
How is the "Double" motif analyzed in the context of both authors?
The "Double" (or Doppelgänger) is analyzed as an expression of the writers' own internal divisions and anxieties, serving as a device to externalize the conflicts between their identities, such as their shared experiences of displacement and their "divided loyalties."
- Quote paper
- Doctor Malika Rebai Maamri (Author), 1999, The Conradian Legacy in the Novels of Graham Greene, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/275318
