『프랑스 중위의 여자』에 나타난 포스트모더니즘 소설기법

Abstract

The major feature of British realistic classics is the existence of the objective reality which could be reflected by a language. However, with the entrance of the structural linguistics that focuses on the arbitrary unification between the language and objects in the early twentieth century, it was recognized that it is impossible for a language to express the world objectively due to the fact that the meaning of a language is not absolute, but newly made in the text and varied according to a situation. These thoughts made Postmodernists need new narrative techniques to embody such views of the various and uncertain world into novels. Metafiction is one of such postmodernist techniques to put uncertain new value system into novels, as was stream of consciousness to search self in modern era. John Fowles, one of the greatest contemporary novelists, fully aware that fiction can't be separated from reality, renounced Victorian realism and employed such postmodernist techniques as reader-presence, inter-textuality and parody through authorial intervention and multiple endings. The purpose of this paper is to study how postmodernist techniques were reflected in The French Lieutenant's Woman. The second chapter analyzes the pluralistic views of subjectivity. Sara and Charles, the main characters, were shown in multi features. The third chapter shows how Fowles extended the tradition of the past to contemporary one using postmodern narrative techniques. Though Charles was described from humanistic views shown in realistic novels, his self-consciousness was suggested to be beyond era, contemporary and existential one, and different from Victorian bildungsroman. In the fourth chapter, Fowles reveals the relationship between an author and characters by showing himself as one of the characters, which is quite different from previous novels. Such authorial intervention shows how Fowles breaks the boundaries between fiction and reality. Moreover, the chapter studies how Fowles enables readers to create new stories and interpret freely instead of accepting a interpretation given from the normal text by using multiple endings.