John Barth Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

John Barth‟s “Lost in the Funhouse ” is a prime example of a postmodernist short fiction. The poetics of the work is mainly concerned with questions of ontology and frequently seeks to foreground this notion in different ways so much so that the reader gets lost in a funhouse of reading. Accordingly, the story has been divided into separate worlds, each trying to call into attention its own ontological existence and significance. Barth‟s story self-consciously implements certain techniques at different levels of his work to foreground world formation and draw the reader‟s attention towards the worlds of the text. His story foregrounds different planes, each of which stands independently as an ontological world: the world of language and text, the metafictional level, the projected world level, and the external world of the author. However, the resultant ontological ruptures, which are intentionally induced, cause various complications in the narrative. Ontologies are presented as un...

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- Ontology, John Barth, Indeterminacy, Rupture

Postmodern literature, fiction in particular, is, according to Barth (1984), a literature of exhausted possibility due to its entangled thematic and technical approach which defies the conventional modern fictional form. It reflects the zeitgeist or the spirit of postmodernism which is regarded as a revaluation of the modern enterprise; an enterprise that embodies universality and coherence. The present research paper attempts to address the recurrent thematic element that postmodern fiction revolves around: that of the presence of the historiographic element in postmodern fiction which reflects in itself the evaluation of past history; such a fictional preoccupation reflects the major postmodern philosophers' and thinkers' concerns, such as those of Lyotard and Baudrillard, on the impossibility for the existence of a universal coherent history. This criterion is one amongst other criteria that justify the exhaustion of postmodern fiction.

- by Nariman LARBI
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- Postmodernism, Postmodern Fiction, Fredric Jameson, Historiographic Metafiction

The paper focuses on Margaret Atwood's novel The Penelopiad and John Barth's short stories "Menelaiad" and "Anonymiad," comparing the approaches of the two authors in their postmodernist retellings of Homer's Odyssey. Both Atwood and Barth base their narratives on minor episodes from this epic, with its less prominent or unnamed characters assuming the roles of the narrators. Using different postmodernist techniques, the authors experiment with the form and content of the narration, combine different genres, and demythologize the situations and characters. In their re-evaluations and reinterpretations of the Odyssey, they create works which epitomize Barth's notion of postmodernist fiction as a literature of replenishment. The comparative analysis presented in this paper aims to highlight the ways in which Atwood and Barth challenge the old and add new perspectives on Homer's epic, at the same time confirming its relevance in the postmodern context.

- by Bojana Aćamović
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- American Literature, Mythology, English Literature, Postmodern Literature

Beginning from Greek and Roman traditions— jokes functioned as benign acts to display socio-political conjunctures by (de)constructing ongoing reality —in other words, History. From the plays and comedies, artistic humor evolved in a satirical direction with the popularization of political cartoons in Renaissance (see Commedia dell’Arte) and turned into the caricaturization of themes, found its way through new mediums of Modern times.
The abundance of such media is “exhausted” in the process, claims the Postmodernist author Barth, and the so-called “intermedia (or) mixed-media” has emerged against the aesthetic traditions of high-modernism (Exhaustion, 73). Consequently in the Postmodern novel, History is given with its meta-textual reading and its representation via some mixed techniques of satire and is also correlated with the mocking of conventional ways of perception (as well as humor) that has reflected itself into literature. For example, as a response to the traumatizing effects of political unconscious in modern times (i.e. world-wars and socio-economical depressions), PMist “dark humor” functioned as a coping mechanism, a uniting element for the collective psychology. Therefore with its “quicker” tones and the rejecting/questioning approach, Postmodern art stated a format change in the way things are depicted, often revealing the absurdity intrinsic to the consumerist, modernist lifestyle. Thus the role of the medium with the use of techniques of parody and pastiche functioned as a vital

- by Suha Zaimoglu
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- History, Postmodernism, Kurt Vonnegut, Postmodernism (Literature)

This essay looks at The Pale King's representation of three bureaucratic technologies—paper documents, punch cards and computers—and describes its intertextual relationships with John Barth's 1979 novel LETTERS and the films Blade Runner and The Terminator. The Pale King is “a portrait of a bureaucracy”, but it is also a novel which wrestles with the idea of self-reference. Its imitation of bureaucratic documents, by the use of cross-referencing, footnotes and the section symbol (§), means that its self-references constitute an unexpected kind of mimetic realism. Its representations of newer bureaucratic technologies—punch cards and computers—involve strategies for escaping narrative linearity borrowed from LETTERS: spatial organization of data, alphabetization and automation. The Pale King uses these bureaucratic textual strategies to explore the analogy between reflexivity in fiction and the Science Fiction trope of consciousness arising in artificial technologies, an analogy David Foster Wallace propos...

- by Simon de Bourcier
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- Philip K Dick, Postmodernism, David Foster Wallace, Metafiction
- by David Creuze
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- Recycling, Postmodernism, John Barth, Steven Millhauser
- by Chris Witter
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- American Literature, 1960s (U.S. history), Working-Class Literature, Walter Benjamin

Tom opowiadań "Lost in the Funhouse" ukazał się w Stanach Zjednoczonych w roku 1968 z podtytułem Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice. (...) W przedmowie Barth zastrzega, że to, co mamy przed sobą, to „ani zbiór, ani wybór, lecz seria [...] pomyślana do odbioru ‚naraz’”. Instrukcja ta jest raczej manifestacją twórczej pozy, ponieważ zarówno idea odbioru „naraz”, jak i realizacja za pomocą mediów poleconych przez autora są propozycją ćwiczenia umysłowego, (...) [która] w istocie stanowi dla Bartha istotę literatury i to przez jej pryzmat, mając na uwadze stanowisko, które oddają eseje teoretyczne pisarza, należałoby czytać prozatorskie eksperymenty "Zagubionego".

- by David Letzler
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- Metafiction, Cognitive Literary Theory, John Barth

This is the front matter for an anthology I edited for Greenhaven Press that was published in 2001 and is, as far as I know, now out of print (though copies are still floating around on various used-book websites). What is included here is the front matter that I wrote as well as the table of contents for the excepted pieces that I anthologized within the book.

- by Derek C. Maus
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- Thomas Pynchon, Postmodernism, Postmodern Fiction, Kurt Vonnegut

The appearance of digital technology radically altered the way we create, read and think of texts. In contrast to the generally internalized notions of coherent narrative, unchanging text, monolithic authorship and one-way flow of information suggested by printed works, the emergence of hypertext correspond to the ethos of fluidity, multivocality and interactivity. Since the paradigmatic shift to the dominance of nonlinearity is still in progress, it is useful to examine texts that foreshadow the peculiarities of the approaching era within the limitations of print culture.
The first part of the thesis provides a theoretical framework in which three types of linearity – story, reading and transmission – are identified. These axes can be subverted by multiplication and fragmentation. What follows is a richly illustrated overview of methods of defying the above linearities.
The second part includes analyses of three distinctly nonlinear texts: Barth’s ‘Lost in the Funhouse’, Coover’s ‘The Magic Poker’ and finally Nabokov’s Pale Fire. They employ various techniques of breaking the aforementioned linearities. Moreover, the disruption of the axes bears narrative relevance in these works, demonstrating how nonlinearity can be an organizing principle.

- by Dávid Katona
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- Book History, History of the Book, Postmodernism, Hypertext theory
- by William Solomon
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- American Literature, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, 1960s Culture

To what degree does metafiction construct and deconstruct worlds? More specifically, to what degree does metafiction succeed in constructing a verisimilar possible world or, on the contrary, undress it of materiality and the illusion of reality, turning rather to itself as a text? Metafiction as a self-conscious, auto-referential fiction, drawing attention to its mechanisms and its status as an artifact, while a possible world is a world that is credible, ontologically different from ours only in being non-actualised. Moreover, in metafictions like James Joyce's Ulysses, or John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, deconstructing worlds means not only de-materialising worlds, turning to form in an extremely overt way and moving from mimesis of product to mimesis of process, but also the French deconstruction praxis of denouncing the structuralist dichotomy of the signified and signifier, thus loosing oneself in a network of signifiers which ultimately destroy the metaphysics of the signified. After poststructuralism murders the author, the latter revives as a practical fiction in a textual world of indecidables.

- by Ana-Maria Deliu
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- James Joyce, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction, Possible World Semantics
- by Bojana Aćamović
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- American Literature, Postmodernism, John Barth

A review of John Barth's novel The End of the Road.

- by Christopher Willard
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- American Literature, Literature, Literary Criticism, Postmodern Fiction

A classmate recently noted some of the limitations and flattening in narrative that exists from realist modes of storytelling. They mentioned that sex is mostly absent from best selling novels and other popular forms of narrative, despite sex being a natural process in everyday life. The lens which reality is presented is always going to be skewed based on who is telling the story and what details they wish to disclose or omit, always in a sense, limiting other perspectives. Is there a way to navigate bias in narrative? Perhaps a narrator who has calculated every possible perspective before typing a single word? This is unlikely. Something that may be more effective would be to examine the way in which narration limits the process of its own storytelling by thoroughly examining the narrative. This is known as the metanarrative of a text. In the case of this paper, we will examine the metanarrative to look at the short stories of John Barth and Jorge Luis Borges respectively to see how they explore the limitations of language and traditional storytelling in their metafictional stories, Lost in the Funhouse and The Garden of Forking Paths. These stories explore their own processes that make them works of fiction, thus works of metafiction. Metafiction allows us to look at the metanarrative of a story through its form.

- by David Diaz
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- Jorge Luis Borges, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Metafiction

This essay reads the short stories of David Foster Wallace’s 1999 collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men as ethical problems and declarations of love which are intended to affect the reader deeply, even as they struggle with the... more

- by David Coughlan
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- American Literature, Love, Contemporary Literature, David Foster Wallace

Циклус тематски повезаних приповедака, Изгубљен у кући смеха, често се наводи као парадигматичан пример метафикције – то јест, дела које скреће пажњу на сопствени фиктивни статус. Међутим, може се ићи и даље и показати да Барт кроз своје приповетке износи и поетичке ставове којима се у писању руководи, као и размишљања о савременој књижевности уопште. Један од Бартових кључних уметничких и књижевно-теоријских увида тиче се односа љубави и стваралаштва, што овај рад настоји да покаже.

- by Nataša Tučev
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- English Literature, John Barth

John Barth's short story Lost in the Funhouse links two distinct models of space – the funhouse and the labyrinth. With the funhouse (or house of mirros), Barth implicitly refers back to the 17th and 18-century concept of love mazes, but also modifies it signficantly. Not only does he set up the progress through the labyrinth as a playful and sexualized interaction, but he also connects it to storytelling and imagination: As the labyrinth is presented as a matrix of paths and possibilities, which can be controlled by a mastermind, so the storytelling considered to be a process that can be operated like a cybernetic machine. Storytelling is, like in a simulation or strategy game, considered as a dynamic combination of dramatic nodes and branching paths. The article examines the spatial structures of Barth's story and its effects on the subject and the narrative composition.

- by Matthias Hennig
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- Space and Place, Cybernetics, Sexuality, Storytelling
- by Martin Dines
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- Children's Literature, Suburban Studies, John Barth
- by Alfredo Palomba
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- John Barth, Letteratura, Letterature comparate, Postmoderno
- by Nariman LARBI
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- Philosophy, Postmodernism, Postmodern Fiction, Fredric Jameson
- by Hatice Övgü Tüzün
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- Postmodern Literature, John Barth, Fyodor Dostoevsky
- by Derek C. Maus
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- American Literature, American History, Russian Studies, Comparative Literature
- by Catia de Sousa
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- Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Orson Welles

Resumo Neste artigo, disserta-se sobre a metaficção associada à "exaustão de literatura", ou seja, ao esgotamento da criatividade literária, como John Barth (1930-) havia declarado num ensaio de 1967. A partir de Lost in the Funhouse (1968) deste autor, e de Ficciones (1944) de Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), autor do qual John Barth é leitor, estabeleço uma leitura comparativa sobre os três motivos recorrentes da metaficção (o espelho, o labirinto e o círculo) e analiso criticamente os meios que o discurso literário utiliza para se recriar e subverter (título, pontuação, personagem, narrador), numa tentativa de reverter essa "exaustão da literatura". Abstract In this article I analyse how metafiction is linked to "The Literature of Exhaustion", that is, the exhaustion of all creative ways and possibilities in literary art, as John Barth explained in an essay published in 1967. From Lost in the Funhouse (1968), by this author, and Ficciones (1944), by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), I use a comparative methodology to examine the three tropes of metafiction (mirror, labyrinth and circle) and study how literary discourse works its way out of that "exhaustion", through subversion and recreation. literatura encontra-se exausta. Eis o que John Barth declarou no seu ensaio "The Literature of Exhaustion", de 1967. Além de se considerar discípulo de Jorge Luis Borges e de Vladimir Nabokov, John Barth enumera uma miríade de características que se tornarão válidas enquanto traços delineadores da metaficção, um dos muitos movimentos literários filhos do pós-modernismo. De facto, os três autores têm inúmeras semelhanças relativamente ao seu trabalho ficcional, e o ensaio composto por Barth testemunha a letargia ou morte A

- by Eduarda Barata
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- Art, Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges, Metafiction
- by Dirk Vanderbeke
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- Thomas Pynchon, John Barth
- by Flavia Soubiran
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- Design, Fashion design, Victorian Studies, Graphic Design

While autofiction has featured significantly in French literary theory for around four decades, postmodernism has rarely figured as a context for literary-critical analysis in France. In the United States the situation is almost the exact opposite. Autofiction features seldom in studies of American literature from the late twentieth century to the present day, while postmodernism remains one of the dominant categories within which to analyse late twentieth-century fiction. This chapter provides the first analysis of autofiction in the United States as a postmodern form of writing. More precisely it will examine the similarities between autofiction and the signature device of postmodernist writers, metafiction, in order to suggest that autofiction deserves to be regarded as an important postmodern form of writing. In fact, because of the emphasis on authorship in postmodern writing (its preoccupation with what it means to be an author), it can be argued that as much as autofiction emerges from within the tradition of postmodern metafiction in the United States, it might make sense to consider metafiction itself as a subcategory of autofiction. At the heart of the chapter is a study of the work of the Polish expatriate American-based writer Jerzy Kosinski, who began in the 1980s to describe his writing as autofiction. Kosinski’s work functions as a gateway to studying American autofiction in relation to postmodern metafiction. But the reception of his work also invites consideration of autofiction in a second context, what I term ‘obscene’ culture (celebrity- and scandal-obsessed and fascinated by self-revelation and exposure). The chapter also posits a third context, what Mark McGurl has termed ‘The Program Era’, in which the practice of ‘autopoesis’ (or self-production or self-reference) is central. While none of these three contexts is exclusively American, each is nevertheless especially relevant to literature produced in the United States in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as we have moved from postmodernism to post-postmodernism. To demonstrate this, the chapter accompanies its focus on Kosinski with analysis of autofictions by his contemporaries Kurt Vonnegut and John Barth, and more recent work by the writers David Foster Wallace, Bret Easton Ellis and Dave Eggers.

- by Bran Nicol
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- American Literature, Art, Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary American Literature

1. Milênios nietzschianos: megalomania cultural e posteridade
2. A história continua. John Barth: meio século de pós-modernismo
3. John Barth sai de cena
4. Publicando Lolita. Comentário do Prefácio de John Ray, Jr., ph. D.
5. Um lugar-comum do contemporâneo: a valorização narrativa do acaso
6. Scientia conditionata e a liberdade da vontade divina em Francisco Suárez
7. Negociações semânticas acerca da fisiologia da melancolia na Universa medicina, de Jean Fernel (1497?-1558)

- by Andre Rangel Rios
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- Intellectual History, Semantics, Early Modern Europe, Literary Theory

La opera flotante de John Barth tiene varias puertas de acceso para el análisis. Una de ellas nos lleva a indagar sobre el tema que circunda la obra: el suicidio. Para ello, en el presente trabajo vamos a contrastar las posibles características apocalípticas del personaje principal, Todd Andrews, con determinados postulados de la filosofía existencialista de Jean Paul Sartre. La propuesta estará centrada en revisar puntos de divergencia y de afinidad en ambas cosmovisiones.
Palabras Clave: Apocalipsis - existencialismo - cambio de opinión - muerte - suicidio - vida

- by Jorge Aloy
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- American Literature, Jean Paul Sartre, John Barth, Literatura
- by Sanja Šoštarić
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- Feminism, Metafiction, John Barth, American Postmodern Fiction

Tutkielmassani käsittelen amerikkalaiskirjailija John Barthin teoksia The Floating Opera (1956) ja The End of the Road (1958). Työssäni osoitan, kuinka teosten bahtinilainen polyfonia ilmentää eksistentialistisen etsinnän ajatusta. Väitän, että Barthin teokset yhtä aikaa parodioivat ja korostavat eksistentialistista ajattelua. Näen, että tämä eksistentialistisen etsinnän ajatus ilmenee tekstin lisäksi myös teosten muodon tasolla. Tutkimukseni pääajatuksen voi kiteyttää muotoon muoto on merkitys. Käytän työni teoreettisena viitekehyksenä neuvostoajattelija Mihail Bahtinin teoksia Dostojevskin poetiikan ongelmia (1929) ja François Rabelais: Keskiajan ja renessanssin nauru (1965) ja näitä kahta teosta kommentoivia tekstejä kuten Julian Kristevan artikkelia ”Word, Dialog and Novel” (1986), Michael Bernsteinin Bitter Carnival – Ressentiment and The Adject Hero (1992), Sue Vice teosta Introducing Bakhtin (1997) sekä Sari Salinin Narri kertojana – Kultaisesta aasista suomalaiseen postmodernismiin (2008). Hyödynnän työssäni eteenkin kirjallisen polyfonian, dialogisuuden, karnevalismin ja intertekstuaalisuuden käsitteitä. Vertaan Barthin töitä myös Kurt Vonnegutin teoksiin Teurastamo 5 eli lasten ristiretki (1969) ja Mestarien aamiainen (1973) sekä Milan Kunderan romaaneihin Naurun ja unohduksen kirja (1978) ja Olemisen sietämätön keveys (1984). Otan tarvittaessa myös muita esimerkkejä kaunokirjallisuudesta Työni toisena suurena viitekehyksenä käytän eksistenssifilosofiaa. Eksistentialisti kirjailijoista ja filosofeista nostan esiin Søren Kierkegaardin, Friedrich Nietzschen, Fjodor Dostojevskin, Albert Camus’n ja Jean Paul Sartren. Vertaan heidän ajatuksiaan Barthin teosten henkilöiden ajatuksiin. Hyödynnän aihealueen klassikkojen kuten Kierkegaardin Pätevä epätieteellinen jälkikirjoitus (1844), Nietzschen Hyvän ja pahan tuolla puolen (1886) ja Moraalin alkuperä (1887) sekä Camus’n Sysifoksen myyti (1942) ja Kapinoivan ihmisen (1951) lisäksi Torsti Lehtisen yleisteosta Eksistentialismi: Vapauden filosofia (2002) ja Richard Appignanesin teosta Mihin uskovat eksistentialistit (2006). Lisäksi lainaan tutkimuksessani Lehtisen teosta Søren Kierkegaard – Intohimon, ahdistuksen ja huumorin filosofi (1990). Olen myös pohtinut Bahtinin ajattelun eksistentialistisia ulottuvuuksia Tzetan Todorovin, Terry Eagletonin ja Ann Jeffersonin aihetta kommentoivien tekstein kautta. Lähiluvun kautta löydän ja analysoin tutkimuksessani The Floating Operan ja The End of the Roadin kohtia ja piirteitä, jotka ilmentävät kirjallista polyfoniaa. Olen jaotellut nämä piirteet analyysiosiossani teosten väliseen dialogisuutteen, tekstilajien kirjon ja tyyli inkonsistenssiin ilmentämään kognitiiviseen dissonanssiin sekä karnevalistisiin piirteisiin. Tekstien välisessä dialogisuudessa analysoin, kuinka Barthin teoksien välille luodaan dialogisuutta käsittelemällä samoja asioita. Kummatkin kohdeteokseni käsittelevät muun muassa aviorikosta ja sitä seurannutta raskautta, ihmisten rooleja sekä suhtautumista värillisiin ihmisiin. Erittelen The Floating Operan tyylin inkonsistenssia eli rikkonaisuutta ja nostan esiin karnevalistisia kohtia kummastakin kohdeteoksestani. Tämän lisäksi analysoin työssäni Barthin teosten intertekstuaalisuutta, joka Kristevan mukaan olennainen osa polyfoniaa. Osoitan The Floating Operan tärkeimmiksi interteksteiksi Hamletin (1603), Sysifoksen myytin, Homeroksen Odysseian (750-650 eaa.) ,Machado de Assisin teokset The Epitaph of a Small Winnerin (1880) sekä Joycen Odysseuksen (1922), kun taas The End of the Roadin kohdalla keskiöön nousevat Kapinoiva ihminen, raamatulliset tekstit, Ilias (750–650 eaa.) ja de Assisin Philosopher or dog?(1892). Kohdetekstieni yhteisiksi tyylillisiksi kanssateksteiksi tulkitsen Sternen Tristram Shandyn - Tristram Shandy – elämä ja mielipiteet (1759–1767) ja Dostojevskin Kirjoituksia kellarista (1834). Tutkimuksessani todistan, että Barthin teokset kyseenalaistavat ja naurullistavat Camus’n Sysifoksen myytissä ja Kapinoivassa ihmisessä esittämät ajatukset ja muuttavat niiden dogmaattisuutta suhteellistavaan, ambivalenttiin suuntaan. Näin The Floating Opera ja The End of the Road tuo Sartren ja Camus’n modernia eksistentialismia kohti Kierkegaardin, Nietzschen ja Dostojevskin polyfonista eksistentialismia, jossa matka on itse määränpää.

- by Jussi Moilanen
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- Literature, James Joyce, Shakespeare, Bakhtin

- by Ana-Maria Deliu
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- Literature, James Joyce, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction
- by Walter Verschueren
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- Postmodern Fiction, 20th Century American Literature, John Barth

Background: "Lost in the Funhouse" is a famous example of metafiction, that is, a postmodernist form of fiction in which (as Google has it) "the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (especially naturalism) and traditional narrative conventions." Such works are often intertextual, borrowing well-known techniques, events, characters, and even actual passages-from prior works. Explicit authorial intrusion into the text is another characteristic of metafiction.

- by Ronald Walker
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- Metafiction, John Barth, Short story

Although ambivalence in a strict sense, according to which a person holds opposed attitudes, and holds them as opposed, is an ordinary and widespread phenomenon, it appears impossible on the common presupposition that persons are either unitary or plural. These two conceptions of personhood call for dispensing with ambivalence by employing tactics of harmonizing, splitting, or annulling the unitary subject. However, such tactics are useless if ambivalence is sometimes strictly conscious. This paper sharpens the notion of conscious ambivalence, such that the above tactics cannot be applied to ordinary moments of explicit and clear ambivalent consciousness. It is shown that such moments reveal ambivalence as an attitude that is part of human life. The argument employs three features of consciousness
that together capture its outgoing character (a notion that combines intentionality and self-consciousness). In the last section some of the implications of conscious ambivalence for consciousness and the mind are clarified as the analysis of conscious ambivalence in this paper is compared with Hume’s and John Barth’s phenomenalist conceptions.

- by Hili Razinsky
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- Self and Identity, Hume, Altered States of Consciousness, Self Consciousness