This study analyzes the development of the major characters in Fowles's novel - Charles, Sarah, and Sam - in terms of the heroic quest motif. Using the basic pattern of the heroic quest, the monomyth, that Joseph Campbell sets forth in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces, I attempt to show that Fowles's novel may best be understood as the story of three separate heroic quests whose paths cross rather than as the story of a single hero or heroine. This reading seems to account best for all elements of the novel and to explain best the final positions of the characters in question as well as providing a rich appreciation of the novel's wealth of imagery.

Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2016-06-22T13:06:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 1239262 bytes, checksum: 7771a41858b9b6b813e1e57862b7c084 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-22T13:06:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 1239262 bytes, checksum: 7771a41858b9b6b813e1e57862b7c084 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-31 / This dissertation proposes a comparative analysis of metafiction in the novel The French lieutenant's woman, by John Fowles and in the film with the same name, directed by Karel Reisz, with screenplay by Harold Pinter. Our theoretical frame highlights some of the main studies published in the field of metafiction. We supplement the investigation of metafiction in the literary and filmic narrative in interface with other theoretical contributions, among them: narratology, filmic adaptation and some theoreticians of postmodernism. We adopt as a methodological principle the comparative investigation of some aesthetic devices and procedures associated with metafiction (self-reflexivity, self-consciousness, intertextuality, mise-en-abyme, among others) as long as they have been emphasized in the appreciation of some selected narrative categories (narrator, epigraph, character, reader/spectator) in the literary and filmic contexts. As a whole, our results consider metafiction as being a privileged, mediatory, logic, processual and theoretical-critical tool for the in-depth comprehension of the filmic and literary narratives. / Esta dissertação propõe uma análise comparativa da metaficção no romance The French lieutenant's woman, de John Fowles e no filme homônimo, dirigido por Karel Reisz, com roteiro de Harold Pinter. Nosso aporte teórico focaliza, sobretudo, os principais estudos publicados na área da metaficção. Suplementamos a investigação da metaficção na narrativa literária e fílmica com a interface de outros subsídios teóricos, dentre eles: a narratologia, a adaptação fílmica e alguns teóricos do pós-modernismo. Adotamos como princípio metodológico, o exame comparado de alguns recursos e procedimentos estéticos filiados à metaficção (tais como, autorreflexividade, autoconsciência, intertextualidade, mise-en-abyme, entre outros), conforme foram sendo enfatizados ao longo da apreciação de algumas categorias narrativas selecionadas (narrador, epígrafe, personagem, leitor/espectador) nos contextos literários e fílmicos. Em síntese, nossos resultados recaem sobre a metaficção enquanto uma ferramenta teórico-crítica, processual, lógica, mediadora e privilegiada para a compreensão aprofundada das narrativas literária e fílmica em pauta.

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Undersöker hur den berättartekniska strukturen i John Fowles roman The French Lieutenant's Woman skapar en interaktion mellan läsare och text. Syftet är att diskutera hur detta bidrar till det didaktiska budskap som romanen tycks formulera. Uppsatsen använder Shoshana Felmans teorier om överföring mellan läsare och text och Wolfgang Isers begrepp "den implicita läsaren" som verktyg för analysen.

M.A. (English) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Existentialism and Darwinism provide a means of viewing the development of personal freedom in a young English gentleman, Charles Smithson. Guided by Sarah Woodruff, a social outcast, Charles approaches freedom through the existential conditions of terror, anguish, and despair; he encounters alienation, human finitude, and the loss of a relationship with God on the way. The realization of his trapped state is aided by the Darwinian analogy present in the novel: the monied leisure class to which Charles belongs is presented as the species approaching extinction because it fails to make the changes necessary to survive changed conditions. The novel's two endings combine existential and Darwinian elements to present to Charles the choice that can help him escape his trapped state and gain freedom.

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New, old novels, contemporary fictions that parody the forms, conventions, and devices of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, form a significant and increasingly popular subclass of postmodernist fiction. Paradoxically combining realistic and metafictional conventions, these works establish an ironic dialogue with the past, employing yet simultaneously subverting traditional fictional techniques. / In this dissertation, I subject five new, old novels--John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor and LETTERS, Erica Jong's Fanny, T. Coraghessan Boyle's Water Music, and John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman--to a detailed analysis, which compares the parodic role of archaic devices in each contemporary novel to the serious use made of such devices in the past. I argue that new, old novels, by juxtaposing old and new world views, foreground the ontological concerns of fiction and suggest that literary representation is constitutive rather than imitative of reality. Their examination of the relationship between fiction and reality places them at the centre of contemporary concern.