On The Application Of Impressionism In Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes

Under Western Eyes is one of Joseph Conrad's major political novels. As the literary survey demonstrates,critical preference both at home and abroad has been particularly focused on Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim.Weereas little importance has been attached to Under Western Eyes.As for all the previous researches on Under Western Eyes,critics are more concerned with its language features,the double narration,its political dimensions and Conrad's political attitudes reflected in it. Nevertheless,Conrad is deeply influenced by impressionism.He elaborately applies impressionism in Under Western Eyes,but few related studies on this aspect can be found.This thesis concentrates on the application of impressionism in Conrad's Under Western Eyes.Chapter One introduces the transformation from impressionism to literary impressionism and the fact that Conrad has been widely accepted as an impressionist.Chapter Two analyzes impressionist visual aspects in Under Western Eyes.Repeated color,light and eye images in the novel exhibit the impressionist effect,which embodies Conrad's artistic view of "make you see." Chapter Three deals with impressionist temporality in Under Western Eyes.Juxtaposition of mechanical time and human time,together with achronological time display the impressionist effect.Impressionist temporality confirms Conrad's concern about subjective perceptions and the epistemology of subjectivity.Chapter Four centers on impressionist narrative techniques in Under Western Eyes.Multiple perspectives and the "delayed decoding" technique achieve the impressionist effect.For Conrad,truth is uncertain and can be gained from many sources.Impressionist narrative techniques perfectly illustrate Conrad's skepticism towards truth.By analyzing the application of impressionism in Under Western Eyes,this thesis concludes that Conrad elaborately employs impressionism in visual aspects,in temporality and in narrative techniques.These impressionist techniques respectively conveys Conrad's aesthetic concerns and philosophical ideas of "make you see",the epistemology of subjectivity and skepticism towards truth.