NARRATIVE PATTERNS IN JOSEPH CONRAD’S SHORT STORY

Ecaterina CRECICOVSCHI Universitatea de Stat din Moldova

Abstract

In J.Conrad’s short prose one can distinguish a number of narrative patterns, used by the author to discuss his major Neoromantic concerns. Hence the article highlights three of them, which have a large spread in Conradian story. The first pattern shows the writer’s preference for the frame story, E.Said arguing that Conrad’s texts represent in most of the cases a swapped yarn, a historical report, a mutually exchanged legend, a musing recollection, thus implying the presence of a speaker and a listener and a specific occasion. The second pattern focuses on the role of the Conradian narrator and the narration itself, M.Greaney claiming that in a number of Conrad’s stories there is a narrator (usually anonymous), which encloses the oral representation of the storyteller, while the process of telling the story itself is idealized as a dialogue between equals that surpasses all cultural boundaries. The third pattern emphasizes the ironic content of Conrad’s short stories by means of eight narrative devices: 1) ambiguization of traditional connotations; 2) Impressionism as a secularization of the mythical; 3) causing confusion "by narcissistic introspection"; 4) "balance" between the diegetic frame and the restrictive point of view; 5) the narrator as a subject of investigation, 6) the open end; 7) the effect progression; 8) microstructural / stylistic devices. Keywords: short story, narrative pattern, Neoromanticism, frame story, narrator, telling, irony, open end, microstructural / stylistic devices.