TY  - THES
AB  - The present dissertation tries to analyze to what degree the novels of John Fowles can be seen as examples of postmodernist narrative strategies. To do so, the terms "postmodernity", "postmodern" and "postmodernist" are defined.
"Postmodernity" is the historical epoch following Modernity, while the adjective "postmodern" is describing a philosophical attitude largely based upon a critique of "metanarratives" and representationality. Literature is "postmodernist" if it uses the central tenets of postmodern thinking in its narrative structures in a way that Hutcheon (1989) has described as a mixture of complicity and critique.
In the present dissertation, the term "metanarrative" is used as defined by Lyotard, designating the unquestioned hypotheses which underlie our apparently rational convictions. While constructivist positions as by de Saussure initiated the critique of representationality, Baudrillard's concept of the "simulacrum" (the imitation of reality is becoming something "realer than real" in itself) is surely a more relevant concept for literary postmodernism. The dissertation is indebted to Hutcheon's definition of postmodernism as a mixture of complicity and critique; in contrast to Lyotard, for whom there is no link between the "simulacrum" and any reality independent of it, such a link is at least possible in the theory of Hutcheon, but is has lost its "representational innocence", and the recipient has question who is telling what to what purpose and in what manner.
It is this mixture of complicity and critique that defines the attitude of postmodernist literature towards different metanarratives. The present volume identifies these key tenets, analysing and deconstructing a different metanarrative in each of Fowles' novels.
DA  - 2003
KW  - Postmoderne , Fowles, John , Fowles, John / A maggot , Fowles, John / The magus , Fowles, John / The collector , Fowles, John / Daniel Martin ,  ,
LA  - eng
PY  - 2003
TI  - Postmodernist narrative strategies in the novels of John Fowles
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:361-8323
Y2  - 2024-12-26T21:46:42
ER  -