Janiform Texts and Covert Plots: From Shakespeare to Said

by Cedric Watts

Janiform Texts and Covert Plots is a sequel to The Deceptive An Introduction to Covert Plots , which maintained that although almost all fictional narratives have a main plot, some have, in addition, a covert plot. At a first reading, the reader sees parts of the covert plot but does not recognise how they cohere. Only in retrospect, or at a second, third or subsequent reading, is the covert plot seen in its entirety. Sometimes many years may elapse before the covert plot is detected and described.  Some covert plots are they span two or more texts (e.g. Heart of Darkness and Chance ). Some are within a secular narrative is a contrastingly supernatural covert plot. Examples are The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ , The Shadow-Line and Victory. This book goes controversially further by postulating covert plots in critical works by Roland Barthes, Mikhail Bakhtin and Edward Said.

250 pages, Hardcover

Published June 8, 2021

About the author

Cedric Watts (1937 - 2022) was an English literary scholar. He served in the Royal Navy, took a B.A. at Cambridge University, and was an Emeritus Professor of English at Sussex University. He published twenty-six critical and scholarly books, including The Deceptive Test (1984) and Literature and Money (1990), and edited twenty-one plays by Shakespeare. His Final Exam: A Novel earned Ian McEwan's praise.

An internationally renowned and prolific scholar of the writings of Joseph Conrad, he played a leading role in Conrad studies as editor, critic and biographer.

Watts' biography of the Scottish writer, adventurer and friend of Conrad, R.B. Cunninghame Graham, rancher in South America, co-founder of the Scottish Labour Party and of the Scottish National Party, drew attention to an important but hitherto neglected figure, while his full-length study Literature and Money revived a largely neglected topic.