On one Literary Allusion: Joseph Conrad’s Youth and Life Lessons in the Artistic World of Ian McEwan’s Novel Lessons

Abstract

  The article is an appeal to the seventeenth novel by the largest modern English writer, biographical in genre and discourse. In it, Ian McEwan creates a kind of socio-psychological and introspective epic of the post-war generation. The article analyzes a literary allusion to Joseph Conrad's novella Youth, its character, role and significance in the artistic world of this novel. The author of the article emphasizes the ironic contrasting parallel of the heroic-romantic story told by Captain Marlow in the novel, which is deliberately built by the writer, and the increasingly mediocre fate of the novel's protagonist as a representative of the writer's generation of peers.