“The Imaginary Lines of a Twilight Country”: Fiction as Enclave in Conrad’s Nostromo

Abstract

By flaunting the artificiality of the landscape of Nostromo, Conrad encourages the reader to consider the enclave of Sulaco as a mise-en-abyme of fiction within fiction, thereby turning both the enclave Sulaco and its narration into heterotopic spaces. As such, the relationship that binds the enclave and the world outside of it is proved to be the same as the one binding fiction and reality, promoting the synecdoche as the dominant figure in Nostromo and paving the way for the modernist poetics of fragmentation.