Quotation, Allusion, Pastiche And Parody

Socially, 1960s of the western world was a decade of "sound and fury". The spirit of rebellion, skepticism, uncertainty and doubts led to the birth of postmodernism. The literary circle was also overfraught with the rebellious and doubtful voices about the literary past. Among the experimentalists who explored new possibilities of fiction, is John Fowles, author of one of the most influential novels of the day -The French Lieutenant's Woman. The present thesis attempts to conduct an intertextual reading of the novel, to identify the close textual relationship it has with the 19^th -century classics, to explore its pluralistic, comprehensive and encompassing postmodern art, and to prove the author's paradoxical attitude towards the literary past. It is also hoped that through the study a better understanding of postmodern literature is to be achieved.The paper is divided into five chapters. The first one is an introduction in the form of an overview of the background as well as the criticism of FLW. Chapter II is a brief introduction to the related intertextual theories. The third chapter first examines the direct quotations from the Victorian texts in FLW and then looks into the Biblical and mythological allusions in the work. In the fourth chapter, the pastiche of several classic Victorian texts and the parody of the literary convention, especially the omniscient narrator, is studied. And the last chapter concludes with a summary and further comment on the novel as well as the author.