The Shadow Line
This article includes a improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2024) ) |
Author | Joseph Conrad |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Novel |
Publisher | J. M. Dent |
Publication date | 1917 |
Media type | Print (Hardback) |
Pages | iii, 197 pp |
The Shadow-Line is a short novel based at sea by Joseph Conrad; it is one of his later works, being written from February to December 1915. It was first published in 1916 as a serial in New York's Metropolitan Magazine (September—October) in the English Review (September 1916-March 1917) and published in book form in 1917 in the UK (March) and America (April). The novella depicts the development of a young man upon taking a captaincy in the Orient, with the shadow line of the title representing the threshold of this development.
The novella is notable for its dual narrative structure. The full, subtitled title of the novel is The Shadow-Line, A Confession, which immediately alerts the reader to the retrospective nature of the novella. The ironic constructions following from the conflict between the 'young' protagonist (who is never named) and the 'old' drive much of the underlying points of the novella, namely the nature of wisdom, experience and maturity. Conrad also extensively uses irony by comparison in the work, with characters such as Captain Giles and the ship's 'factotum' Ransome used to emphasise strengths and weaknesses of the protagonist.
The novel has often been cited as a metaphor of the
Georges Franju made a 1973 television film La ligne d'ombre based on the novel. Andrzej Wajda made a 1976 film adaptation of the novel under its Polish title - Smuga cienia.
In the 2004 novel (translation 2005) House of Paper by
References
- Bleiler, Everett(1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 82.
External links
- The Shadow-Line at Project Gutenberg
- The Shadow-Line public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- Analysis of The Shadow Line at Modernism Lab Essays