earticle

영어

Modern novelists, who began writing after World War Two, conceive new ideas and literary techniques which are quite different from those of their modernist predecessors as well as those of the 18th and 19th century realists. Of the dilemmas with which modern novelists are facing today, the most crucial one is about how to represent artistically, in their fictions, the reality which is newly perceived in this postmodern world. Of the English novelists who started their literary careers in the 1950s, John Fowles is considered to be one of the most important ones both in his intense existential themes and in his innovative literary techniques. As for his art, Fowles can be well discussed in terms of both a traditional realist and an experimental metafictionist. As a modern novelist who lives in the age of “End of Novel,” “Death of Author,” and “Deconstruction,” Fowles tries to ensure the possibilities of the novel genre through various formal experiments. In The Collector, Fowles uses the double narration of one single episode so that the readers could obtain a more objective and inclusive perspective on the events and participate in creating the ultimate meaning of the literary work. The Magus is a story about the conflict between reality and fiction; the protagonist should go through an overwhelming “Godgame” in which a God-like figure, Conchis, manipulated the stage where “every truth was a sort of lie; and every lie a sort of truth” so as to “improvise realities more real than realities.” In The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles uses Victorian way of First-person authorial intrusion into an apparent third-person narration, challenges the traditional view of God-like status of the novelist and induces an creative participation of the individual reader by presenting multiple endings to the novel. All these endeavors of Fowles can be understood as his awareness and recognition of the responsibility of the artist, facing every dilemmas of the modern novelists.