A Labyrinth Without An Exit——A Study Of John Fowles' Ideology And The Techniques In The French Lieutenant's Woman

__ __ __ Abstract John Fowles?The French Lieutenant抯 Woman is one of the most important and interesting English novels in the 20th century. Since this novel was published in 1969, many articles written by critics concerning about it has been published and this novel has been translated into several languages including Chinese. John Fowles has been honored as a postmodernist writer. Accordingly, his works are called postmodernist novels. John Fowles has been regarded by some critics as the only writer in English who has the power, range, knowledge, and wisdom of Tolstoy or Henry James. He is a novelist who is famous in contemporary English literary world and even the whole literary world. He is famous, not because he is good at story telling or describing scenery as Thomas Hardy, but because he never writes on the same kind of contents or in the similar style. John Fowles is very important and peculiar in literary world because of his unique and creative composing techniques in some of his novels and because of his great influence on other writers and his being understood by many critics as a forefather of a new kind of literature. It is thought that John Fowles not only represents the turning point of English novels but also the transition of western literary criticism. In previous studies of John Fowles and his work, The French Lieutenant ~ Woman, there are few articles discussing about John Fowles?views on grand narrative, religion and literary form except some comments on his view on Victorian history. And few approaches have been made concerning the writing techniques of the novel, such as parody, discontinuity, antagonism, juxtaposition, extremity and modes of narrative. This paper sets out to examine John Fowles?views and some techniques used in the novel. It consists of three parts besides conclusion. The first part introduces the author, John Fowles, The French Lieutenant ~ Woman. The second part discusses John Fowles?points of view on grand narrative, religion, history and literary form. The third part examines techniques that the novelist has used when creating the novel. Modes of narration are the focus of this dissertation. Mutiple point of view are adopted in the novel, such as first-person narrative, second-person narrative and third-person narrative, the character as a narrator, and objective, etc. Grant narrative means narratives about humanism, enlightenment, science revolution etc., John Fowles deconstructed grand narrative by disapproving duty, logoscentrism. A religious system center itself on a concept of God, If God is as the system defines him, then everything else in the system makes sense, But in The French ii i2i, Lieutenant抯 Woman, the preachers and the believers are all hypocritical. Thus, John Fowles expressed his view that religion was only fictitious, the religious system was decentered in this sense. With regard to history, John Fowles thought that it was out of order, which was in agreement with French historian Michel Foucalt抯 idea about history. John Fowles challenged the existing traditional form of modernism by his deliberate appearance in the novel...