Self-Reflexive Narrative in American Postmodern Fiction

Abstract

Self-reflexive narrative is the new literary trend which dominated the American postmodern fiction during 1960s and 1970s. John Barth is one of the greatest postmodern American fiction writers. His collection of short stories Lost in the Funhouse (1968) is characterized with an intensive use of self-reflexive narrative in which the subject of almost all the stories of the collection is how fiction is created and the thought processes that the author goes through while creating the fictional work. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate self-reflexive narrative in selected stories from Barth’s collection Lost in the Funhouse. The reason for selecting Barth’s work is the experimental tendency that dominated most of his postmodern writings, as well as his remarkable efforts to refresh what he calls the exhausted literature. Patricia Waugh and Linda Hutcheon‘s theories concerning self-reflexive narrative in American postmodern fiction will be used throughout the discussion. The study is divided into three chapters. The first chapter includes an overview about the postmodern American literature and explores the main characteristics of self-reflexive narrative. The second chapter examines the technique of narrative self-criticism in selected stories from the collection, and the third chapter analyses the reader-involvement technique in some selected stories from the collection.