For the language-minded critic, Conrad's works have always been a privileged field to explore. The ‘linguistic turn’ in the second half of the twentieth century produced many essays and books, some of which have become Conradian classics. Anne Enderwitz's recent essay on Chance, Conrad's most commercially successful novel, argues that whereas in ‘Heart of Darkness’ Marlow seems engaged in ‘melancholy negotiations of the problem of representation’, in the later novel Conrad's pragmatic approach to the affective power of language characterises both Marlow as a storyteller and the development of its female protagonist, Flora de Barral. Enderwitz argues that, if critics with an interest in affect tend to turn away from the linguistic, Conrad ‘sees no need to introduce a dividing line between affect and language’:

There is, indeed, no need to separate affect from language. The argument of this chapter will be that the pragmatic touch is already at work in the early Marlow narratives but in a different mode, which may well account for their different impact on and reception from the reading public. The focus will be on ‘Youth’, ‘Heart of Darkness’, Lord Jim, Chance and Under Western Eyes (which Conrad undertook as a respite from Chance). My working hypothesis is that Conrad at his best explores the possibilities of narrative in the act, both pragmatic and ethical.