Inconceivable history: story-telling as hyperphasia and disavowal

An investigation of the functions of secondary narration in the novel, centring on a selection of Conrad's works and elaborating the idea of fascination as a mode of narrative attention – like that of fetishism, as Freud accounts for it – that allows Conrad at once to explore contemporary history and to keep it at arm's length. A coda pursues the analysis of fascination in The Great Gatsby, now introducing another aspect of fetishism, that of commodities, according to Marx.