CONTINUATION AND INNOVATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY BRITISH NOVEL: THE REFLEXIVE FICTION OF MARGARET DRABBLE, IRIS MURDOCH, AND JOHN FOWLES
Abstract
In defining and discussing the contemporary postmodern novel, most critics base their analyses upon American works written by such authors as Barth, Barthelme, Coover, Gass, and Pynchon, to name just a few, while ignoring completely or dismissing British fiction as outmoded, old-fashioned, and even parochial. Blinded by the life-like characters existing within much contemporary British fiction, many critics do not recognize or acknowledge the experimental, metafictional, and postmodern dimensions of these works. Many contemporary British novels, however, particularly fiction written by Margaret Drabble, Iris Murdoch, and John Fowles, provide evidence to counter this critical misconception. For along with the realistic elements in these works, one finds a strong reflexive voice which poses the same epistemological and ontological questions as the contemporary nouveau roman. In this study, the fiction of Margaret Drabble, Iris Murdoch, and John Fowles is closely examined to demonstrate that the old and the new elements of the novel genre can work together to produce a fiction which is both entertaining and instructive to the general reader and intellectually challenging and innovative to the academician. Chapter One outlines the critical criteria to be used throughout this study to define the experimental dimensions of the contemporary postmodern novel. In Chapters Two through Four, this theoretical framework is applied to the novels of Drabble, Murdoch, and Fowles in order to challenge the critical bias which has mistakenly applied to the contemporary British novel such misleading epithets as old-fashioned, parochial, and archaic, to exemplify the willingness of British novelists to experiment, and to demonstrate the extent to which they have been doing so throughout the last thirty years.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Literature
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