An Analysis Of Carnival Characters In Joseph Conrad's Works

Joseph Conrad(1857-1924) is one of the most distinguished writers writing in English. He is the pioneer of Western Modernist Literature. Joseph Conrad's amazing life and extraordinary achievement may be roughly summed up by several interesting numbers as shown below: He is an incredible miracle in the English literary history whose adult life may be divided into two major phases, during which he leads two totally different kinds of life and career, in both of which he reaches the uppermost top. He writes in the third language he starts to acquire at the age of twenty and produces 16 novels, 7 novelettes, and 23 short stories. His works were a bridge for the literary realism of the nineteenth century and Modernist Literature of the twentieth century. Conrad affected a large number of writers of the twentieth century, and he has also become a research hotspot of the Western academia. The domestic study on Conrad mainly concentrates on the characteristics of his fiction narrative, symbolic significance, impressionism, colonialism and the concept of male patriarchy, etc., while Analysis of characters are mostly focus on the narrator and the main characters. And they constituting the focus of public attention at the same time, they have been given the greatest right by the author to speak. They are the focus target of the novel narrative, to a certain extent they are also the core of the traditional value system. However, the connotation of Conrad's novel is not merely restricted to those characters. Their display is not only the tip of the iceberg.Carnival is a term coined by the Russian critic. Mr. Bakhtin describes various manifestations of popular humor and cultural resistance to the restraints of official cultural hierarchies. Carnival originates from the medieval ritual celebration. Carnival embodies a kind of folk wisdom that celebrates the body and opposes all forms of authority. Carnivalization emphasizes the playful effects of literature, mocking the authorities and releasing the real nature of human beings.The present thesis contains three main parts. It begins with Conrad's family background and his personal experience that play an important role in the forging of carnivalesque characters'personality, which also serves as a key note of understanding and interpreting his characters and works.Chapter II is the analysis of carnival theory and in the meantime analyzes the gist of carnivalesque characters and the narrative functions.Chapter III analyzes the feature of"Carnival"characters in Conrad's novels and the narrative function of"Carnival"characters in Conrad's novels. And the carnival characters are specified in Lord Jim. Therefore, the limitation of a single narrative discourse is broken, and the novel turn into a pluralistic, noisy world which is full of hybrid language and public voice.