THE DISSOLUTION OF VALUE AND MEANING IN JOHN BARTH'S THE FLOATING OPERA

Öz

In his renowned essay "The Literature of Exhaustion" John Barth admits he praises writers like Robbe-Grillet and Borges because they challenge the epistemology of realism and "remind us of the fictitious aspect of our own existence" (30). Darth's own works demonstrate a similar distrust in the conventional, exhausted values of realism and an attempt to refurbish literature with fresh themes and techniques. His first novel The Floating Opera (1956) definitely lacks the high experimentalism of his subsequent novels but it is the theme of the repudiation of stable points of reference which defines its author as a truly postmodern writer still in the threshold of his literary experience. By revealing the fragmentary nature of life and art and the inconsistency of human existence Barth asserts in this work the idea that identity and reality are products of our imagination. an idea which becomes a central motive in his aesthetics.  

Anahtar Kelimeler

• DISSOLUTION
• VALUE
• MEANING

Kaynakça

1. Barth. John. The Floating Opera. London: Secker and Warburg Ltd .. 1961 The Literature or Exhaustion ... S111fiction Fiction Now and Tomorrow, ed. Raymond
2. Federman. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981. pp.19-35
3. Bowen. Zack.!\ Reader's Guide to John Barth. Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 1994
4. Fogel. Slethaug. Undersranding John Banh. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990
5. Harris. Charles B. Passionare Vir111osiry: The Fiction of John Banh. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1983
6. Hasan. lhab "Quest" Contemporary !\111erica11 Fiction. ed. Malcolm Bradbury. London: Edward Arnold. 1987
7. Ziegler. Heide. Co111e111porary Writers: John Barth. New York: Methuen Co .. 1987