John Barth

Giles Goat-Boy or The Revised New Syllabus (1966)
Lost in the Funhouse (1968) collection of 14 related stories Chimera (1972) collection of 3 novellas LETTERS: A Novel (1979) Sabbatical: A Romance (1982) The Friday Book (1984) The Tidewater Tales (1987) The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991) The Literature of Exhaustion (1967) essay The Literature of Replenishment (1980) essay
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Absurdity of the world ＆ meaninglessness of life
In many of Barth’s works, he presents the theme of absurd world with no purpose and meaning. In Barth’s opinion, the reality of modern life is too complex and elusive for man to rationalize and idealize. Only when people rejects it and embrace the world for what it is, can he feel the significance of his life adequately. Barth believes that participation and acceptance of the chaos and absurdity of the world is the only meaningful way of life.
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Nature of fiction and reality
John Barth is more interested in how a story is told than in the story itself. In his works, he constantly refers to the process of writing and reading through the technique of metafiction. Barth’s intent is to alert the reader to the artificial nature of reading and writing, and to prevent him or her from being drawn into the story as if it were real. To explode the illusion of realism, Barth uses a panoply of reflexive devices to remind his audience that they are reading and someone is manipulating behind the scene.
John Barth
杨丽娜 201110694
Outline
• Authorial Life
• Ideas and Themes
• Techniques
• Major Works • Bibliography
Ⅰ.Authorial Life
John Barth, a native son of Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the holder of two degrees from Johns Hopkins University, novelist and shortstory writer. He is recognized as one of the foremost American practitioners of post-modernist fiction.
writing. Barth did not embrace Sigmund Freud and D.H. Lawrence; he turned instead to the earliest novelists like Cervantes, Henry Fielding, Lawrence Stern, and even The Arabian Nights for inspiration. He took great interest in the narrative mode of linking many stories in one framework, and found the absurdist and metafictional works of English playwright Samuel Becket and Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges especially attractive. All these exerted great influences on his writing. Objectively speaking, Barth’s attempt dismembered and destroyed the traditional novel.
Ⅱ.Ideas and Themes
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Literary exhaustion and replenishment
John Barth thinks the novel as a genre has been perfected by the great master of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th, its possibilities as a form have been exhausted, and all the available plots have been used up. Flaubert, Tolstoy, Hemingway, and Faulkner have our respect and admiration, but possess no more appeal to writers of the last third of the 20th century. The traditional novel is dead with Joyce and Kafka. Younger writers will have to find a new way of
Bibliography
【1】常耀信：《美国文学简史》，2003年，南开大学出版社
【2】陈世丹：《美国后现代主义小说详解（中文版）》，2010年，南开
大学出版社 【3】胡全生；林玉珍；胡开宝；索宇环《20世纪英美文学选读---后现代
主义卷》，2003年，上海交通大学出版社
【4】李宜燮；常耀信：《美国文学选读（下）》，1991年，南开大学出 版社
Ⅲ.Techniques
• use of myth and legend
• parody
• black humor
• symbolism • metafiction • self-reflexive (or self-conscious)
Ⅳ.Major Works
The Floating Opera (1956) The End of the Road (1958) The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)
John Barth (1930-)
Barth was born on May 27, in 1930. Before devoting his life to the musical qualities of the English language, Barth studied music briefly at Juilliard. He came to Johns Hopkins University in 1947, earning a BA in 1951 and a MA in creative writing in 1952. Since then, he has become a college writing teacher in a number of universities. This career allows him the time he needs for his fiction: it figures in the settings of some works, some critics feel, in the eruditeness of all his ficitions.
【5】罗良功；李汝成《美国文学选读新编· 20世纪卷》，2010年，华中
师范大学出版社 【6】美国国务院编，杨俊峰译《美国文学概况》，2003年，辽宁教育出
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