'IF ONLY ROADS DID END': THE JOURNEY MOTIF IN THE WORKS OF JOHN BARTH (QUEST, POST-MODERN, AVANT-GARDE)

The journey as an organizing device is ubiquitous in literature from the early wanderings of Odysseus through the later spiritual quest of Christian in Pilgrim's Progress to Dean Moriarty's wanderings in On The Road. Because Barth incorporates the journey motif in a pivotal way, a knowledge of the motif as it appears in literature throughout the ages sheds light on his technique and world view. In the Barthian cosmos, where life is a chaotic flux, the journey involves progression and regression in a linear or temporal way as well as movement along geometric forms of circularity, spirality, or the seamless route of the Moebius strip.;In Chimera Barth presents three journeys, each undertaken to escape stagnation. In "Dunyazadiad," the genie travels through time to reach his muse Scheherazade; in "Perseid," Perseus looks back on his days as a young hero with longing, deciding to take a second journey to regain his youthful glory; and in "Bellerophoniad," Bellerophon imitates Perseus by trying to recapture the vigor of his youth, but his quest becomes an imitation of an imitation. Still on the fictional road in Letters, Barth revises previous characters, recycling them into new incarnations as they proceed on a twentieth-century pilgrimage, propelled by mysterious forces. And in Sabbatical: A Romance, Barth portrays life as a voyage, one frequently compared to the adventures of epic heroes. By incorporating the journey motif into the structure and fabric of his works and recycling the traditions that precede him, Barth combines the past and the present into a "literature of replenishment.";In The Floating Opera Todd Andrews's journey unravels in a floating world that heightens the sense of life as flux. Barth uses the metaphor of the road in The End of the Road to suggest movement from one kind of psychological terminus to another. In The Sot-Weed Factor Ebenezer Cooke grapples with the discontinuity of appearances that confront him in his journey from England to Maryland. Adapting the picaresque mode, Barth creates George Giles's journey in Giles Goat-Boy by mingling archetypal patterns with incarnations of modern technology in a futuristic world.