Set in Authority by Sara Jeannette Duncan, and: The Imperialist by Sara Jeannette Duncan (review)

HUMANITIES 289 The topical essays, however, are generally exact and rewarding. In 'Conradian Narrative' Jakob Lothe deals efficiently with framing, the transposing of cause and effect, and the shadings of irony and'defamiliarization .' Andrea White brings an admirable grounding in nineteenthcentury history to bear on the complexities of the imperial enterprise in Conrad's novels, particularly its deflation into the absurd. She concludes that 'while Conrad's fictions inevitably bear traces of pervasive contempo- . rary attitudes towards empire, and reveal his own anxiety, they contribute in a crucial way to a revaluation of imperialism.' His contribution to modernism is eloquently described in Kermeth Graham's essay, the most critically vigorous in the collection. He pomts to the 'onmivorousness' of Conrad's irony, the ubiquity of his scepticismJ and in its 'epistemological ambiguity' positions 'Heart of Darkness' at the centre of one major current in modernism. Graham also sketches Conrad's ties with 'the nineteenthcentury realisttradition,' but his primary example, the secretagent VerIoc's walk to the embassy, is far more emblematic ofwhat none ofthese essayists recognize in Conrad's fiction, although they might have had they dealt seriously with Jameson's work: the preternatural element of postmodernism . To see Conrad as the first and only 'pre-past-modernist' would be 'too dark - too dark altogether.../ (MARK LEVENE) Sara Jeannette Duncan. Set in Authority. Edited by Germaine Warkentin Broadview Press. 344· $15·95 Sara Jeannette Duncan. The Imperialist. Edited by Thomas E. Tausky Tecumseh Press. xi, 488. $14.95 Sara Jeannette Duncan is becoming well known as one of the best of our early novelists and a pioneer of modernist realism in Canada. Born in Brantford in 1861, Duncan moved to India at the age of thirty and published over twenty books, many of them popular and well reviewed internationally . These two new critical editions of Set in Authority (1906) and The Imperialist (1904) offer textual and explanatory notes, contemporary documents , and a selection of critical views to supplement reliable texts of the novels; both are intended to be course texts as well as useful references for the researcher. Set in Authority is one of Duncan's most serious political novels of the Raj, based upon the 'Rangoon assault case' of 1899in which George Curzon as viceroy of India intervened to ensure that British soldiers accused of raping a Burmese woman were suitably disciplined. In the novel, Duncan creates a fictional viceroy whose interferencein the trial ofa soldier accused of murdering an Indian citizen results in the conviction and death of an innocent man. The novel displays the strengths of Duncan's mature style, 290 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 which joinsher minute dissection ofpoBtical expedienceand principlewith an ironic look at social mores to create an accomplished work of high realism. Its interest in formal issues of structure and narrative voice and its serious engagements with racism and the politics of the Raj make it an interesting book to teach as well as to read, justly compared by editor Germaine Warkentin with E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. Warkentin's edition is a real accomplishment. Her introduction is thoughtful and comprehensive, drawing widely upon historical and critical sources to analyse and contextualize the novel. She refers to recently discovered letters in the A.P. Watt collection at the University of North Carolina to trace the publicatio~ history of the text and Duncan's concerns about it; textual notes appear ill an appendix. In addition, Warkentin includes explanatory notes which judiciously decode Anglo-Indian culture and imperial politics for an undergraduate audience. The 'documents' section of the edition includes contemporary reviews, a light-hearted selection from Duncan's A Social Departure on the niceties of the Calcutta Durbar, and most important, a newly identified article published by Duncan under a pseudonym which criticizes Curzon's actions in the 'Rangoon Assault Case' and his general style of governing. Warkentin sets a reliable text in its historical context, with explanatory notes adequate for undergraduate teaching and documents which supply a useful basis for more sophisticated analysis. ' Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Thomas Tausky's edition of The Imperialist. As the single most 'Canadian' novel in Duncan's reuvre, The Imperialist has...