Authorial Self-Consciousness in the Fiction of John Barth

Abstract

<p>This thesis deals with .the development of the self-conscious authorial voice in the fiction of John. Barth, especially as this self-consciousness relates to the fictional form in which it is found-realistic, fabular, and metafictional. Each chapter will deal with two of Barth's works, which themselves will also be dealt with chronologically. Chapter I will deal with the authorial self-consciousness in the realist mode, as seen in The Floating Opera and The End of the Road. Chapter II will consider the self-conscious presence of the author-figure in The Sot"':"Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy, both of which are attempts to create whole fictional universes, and which indicate in their form the exhaustion of the realist mode for Barth' s purposes. Chapter III will deal with Bartht's metafictional shorter works in Lost in the Funhouse and Chimera, works which take the continual exhaustion of fictional forms as their donnee or subject matter, and which emblematically as well as thematically attempt to describe the dynamics of this exhaustion. Attention will be paid to the last novella "Bellerophoniad," since it stands as Barth's ultimate gesture of exhaustion, culminating and devouring as it does all of Barth's previous fictional corpus. In addition, there is an Appendix containing a glossary of equivalent terms for those found in the allegorical Giles Goat-Boy. This is intended as a short reader's guide, and is by no means exhaustive.</p>