Conrad`s Melodramatic Imagination in Chance = Conrad`s Melodramatic Imagination in Chance

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Chance was Conrad`s first commercial success in his writer`s career. One of the reasons for its success might be that the author`s melodramatic imagination was more markedly crystallized in the novel than in the preceding works. Melodramatic emotionality informs the plight of the heroine, Flora, as a damsel in distress. Viewed from the perspective of melodramatism, Flora stands for "innocence beleaguered" and feminine passivity. The innocent heroine is melodramatically flanked by the gallant hero and the mischievous villain, for her good or evil. Flora is also the object of desire, a melodramatic object par excellence, sought by Captain Anthony, Powell, Marlow and her father, de Barral, in their respective ways. Chance reads like a melodramatic piece for its quality of domestic drama, its lack of psychological depth in characterization, and its heavy dependence on the workings of chance. Conrad`s melodramatism in this novel does not lower his status as a bona fide artist of fiction. It rather shows off the multifarious artistry of Conrad the novelist, a novelist who evidently knew the use of melodrama as a modern form, as a response to the historical symptoms of modernity.

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