ABSTRACT
In The Rover, Joseph Conrad demonstrates that for all its precariousness, for all its inadequacy, narrative is a consolatory action. Conrad's use of romance, far from signaling a retreat into conservatism, in fact enables him to explore concerns about the efficacy of language and narrative that were also at the heart of avant-garde Modernism. The humanity which Conrad attributes to the power of narration reincorporates fiction exactly in its very 'precariousness'. The self-deconstructive quality of romance embodies the notion of irrealizability by frustrating expectation and thwarting narrative purpose. In Lord Jim and in Nostromo the eponymous heroes struggle to conform themselves either to the expectations of others, or to their own fantasies of self-realisation. Neither Jim nor Nostromo are able to stabilise successfully their subjectivity, but rather remain in a precarious state of potentiality.
