Introduction to discourse theory

Abstract

The story in HD is addressed by Marlow, the narrator to the group of narratees on the yawl. They have between them ‘the bond of the sea’. They are defined by the first narrator as an interpretive community. They share an interest in the sea (travel, and adventure); they represent London commerce; and like the implied reader of the late 1890s, they read Blackwood’s Magazine, an established monthly literary journal published in Edinburgh. We know a few other readers by name: William Blackwood, owner of the literary magazine and Conrad’s editor; Cunninghame Graham, the Scottish writer and socialist; Edward Garnett, essayist and dramatist and publisher’s reader who ‘discovered’ Conrad in 1894 and encouraged him to devote himself to writing (he also encouraged other ‘Moderns’ like D. H. Lawrence); Ford Madox Ford, poet, novelist and critic, and collaborator and close friend. The book, HD, is addressed to them.