The Nigger of"The Narcissus" (Annotated, Modern Edition)

A unique, modern edition:

• beautifully formatted with large, easy-to-read fonts;
• annotated, with additional content.

When Lord Jim is read in conjunction with The Nigger of "The Narcissus", the amalgam of defensive and subversive strategies in the later work stands out as an interrogation of the authoritarian philosophy which the earlier fiction underwrites. Both novels partake of received meanings and even in the ideologically heterodox Lord Jim, opposition to imperialism's world-outlook is deflected by the fiction's endorsement of patriotism as the noblest sentiment and ethnic solidarity as the ultimate loyalty. But crucial differences exist and these can be seen as a measure of Conrad's self-contradictory stance towards official ideas and values. Where the novella upholds the power to act, the longer fiction contemplates the faculty of visionary imagination, and where the first stands by the ethic of responsibility to socially appointed duties and excludes from its discussion further questions of the ends such action serves, the second reflects on the propriety of pursuing disentitled ideals at the expense of transgressing mores that govern the existing order. The Nigger of "The Narcissus" militantly sponsors the commandment on 'law, order, duty and restraint, obedience, discipline' that had been hymned by Kipling and handed down as scripture to imperialism's servants, while Lord Jim considers the validity of heretical alternatives to imperialism's formal prescriptions.

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