ABSTRACT
In The Rover Joseph Conrad constructs a post-romance landscape peopled by characters straight out of a romance narrative who continue to exist after the narrative that gave them purpose as characters has been removed. Rather than relinquishing the genre fully in The Rover Conrad explores the possibilities of romance as something already lost and felt as lost. The rover had seen staggering deformities, dreadful mutilations which were the cruel work of man: but it was amongst people with dusky skins. If The Rescue's ending is undercut by its previously written sequels, the successful plotting of The Rover is likewise undone by the events of history. As with Catherine's faith, the return of romance comes out of abnegation, an abnegation that The Rescue in its deconstruction and The Rover in its sparse, indeed petrified, language inflicted on the staple of romance.
