Chance and Its Intertextualities

THE ACCUMULATION OF ALLUSIONS and explicit references to literature turns into novel about writing novel and manifest game with literary conventions, rather than mere sailor's yarn. most obvious generic convention interwoven in is romance with topos of damsel in distress. A beauty in dire predicament, Flora is placed in modern context of financial ruin and limitations imposed by her femininity and rescued by Captain, modern knight errant, lacking family bonds and with his loyal crew for retinue. As Allan H. Simmons indicates: The very structure of Damsel / Knight, might be said to promise romantic resolution, which concept of knight, with its connotations of service and duty rather than love, resists (1999: 261-62).Another alluded to is fairy-tale. Marlow presents Flora, whose childhood is tainted by evil stepmother figures (Eliza and Mrs Fyne), as princess waking from poisoned dream and Anthony as prince who falls in love with her. In connection with fairy-tale convention in Heart of Darkness, Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochere notices that: Juxtaposing his sailor's yarns with folktales invites comparisons as well as contrasts, and Conrad arguably viewed his literary production as continuous with story-telling tradition represented by Grimm while parodying conventional plots, motifs, and structures associated with genre (2008: 3). This is also true with Chance, where reader faces question as to who real Knight / Prince is: Anthony, who creates new for Flora, limited by microcosm of ship, in effect prison; or Powell, who rescues her from prison of solitude? Affiliations with fairy-tale are not as all-encompassing as in Heart of Darkness, where the conventions of as defined in nineteenth century are subverted while traditional gender roles are reversed (3), but like in novella, they make reader aware of social criticism expressed in fairy-tales - a dimension often ignored by those who see in them only escapist stories disconnected from reality (15).Yet another view on generic appropriations has been expressed by J. W. Johnson, according to whom: Chance is comedy of manners which deliberately parodies one kind of Victorian novel, while themadc interests are both original and significant, being chiefly deficiencies of Victorian culture and failure of chivalric idealism as guide of life (1968: 91). Thus incorporates elements of various genres to provide critical vision of society.Conrad also plays with convention of detective fiction by naming Marlow - man of deductions (326). While in Secret Agent Chief Inspector Heat is more typical detective-hero in an urban setting, device that was already established by Conrad's times, following example of Inspector Bucket from Dickens's Weak House (Walton 1969: 456), in Marlow is false detective, not interested in crime at all. delayed criminal element in novel makes Marlow an investigator in sense of examining human fate and nature. He subverts role of an objective detective by constructing clues himself. He provokes situations in which he gathers information. And then, rather than evaluating these puzzles objectively, he imposes his views.Apart from introducing various generic affiliations, narrators in place their tales in specific intertextual space. In this respect, Conrad's works can be analyzed on various planes, major ones being source of literary reference, its explicitness and function. He draws on national literatures, Classics, and Bible. This is related to his cultural background and multilingualism. In his boyhood years, he read French writers and discovered English literature, initially in Polish translation. When he began to learn English, as young adult, he primarily read Shakespeare, Byron, and Dickens (Baines 1960: 143; Najder 2007: 91). …