A Synthetic Crystallization: A Thematic Analysis Of Lost In The Funhouse By John Barth

Being situated in a postmodernist literary creating atmosphere, John Barth feels keenly the exhaustion of the narrative forms, which is manifested in his critical essay "The Literature of Exhaustion." Therefore, he is greatly obsessed with employing new formal devices to replenish the exhaustion in his novel writing. Lost in the Funhouse, one of his postmodernist masterpieces, is one of the results of his effort in this aspect. The book, overtly self-conscious with the highly skilled employment of parody, mise en abyme, authorial intrusion and reader's participation, and other self-conscious devices, is still about something thematic. The themes, concealed deep under the superficially formal games, are traditional ones or the transformation and evolution of the traditional, like the devices.The present thesis, taking the book as a Kunstlerroman and Bildungsroman and a overtly self-conscious novel, focuses on a thematic analysis of the stories. It consists of four parts.In the first part, a brief introduction of the author, the book and its critical reception is given. Because of the dullness of the author's life, the introduction of the author is necessarily extended to the influences and traditions to which the author is greatly indebted.The second and the third parts are the core of the thesis. Beginning with an intertextual reading of the book as a Kunstlerroman and Bildungsroman, the second part subsequently gives a rather detailed thematic analysis of the book from the perspective of the Kunstlerroman and Bildungsroman. Three main themes are highlighted in this part: quests for identity, a continuous, strange love letter and an everlasting wrestle with death. The themes are both traditional and postmodernist because of the use of the devices.In the third part, an introduction of the self-conscious novel is presented at first. Owing to the crucial role the self-conscious devices plays in the completion of the self-consciousness, some devices are discussed with the aim of making the subsequential thematic analysis much more fluent. The succeeding analysis in this part is on the themes as follows: the relationship between reality and fictionality, the roles played by the author and the reader as well as the relationship between tradition and originality. The themes, traditional concerns of the self-conscious novel, are also the transformation and evolution of the concerns written by a postmodernist author in a postmodernist context.Based on the analysis made in the previous parts, the fourth part comes to a conclusion that Lost in the Funhouse is the embodiment and crystallization of Barthian "synthesis" idea, which is put forward in his "The Literature of Replenishment." It is the synthetic crystallization of the themes and the forms, both traditional and original; and of tradition and originality, both thematic and formal.