Modernist Features Of The Sea In A Postmodern Era

The Sea, written by Irish contemporary novelist John Banville, is a novel concerning childhood memory and mortality. After winning the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2005, the novel immediately aroused enormous controversy for the judges'decision to give the Prize to this novel rather than the other more popular ones on the list. However, time has proved that this novel is worthy of the Prize, and some critics even consider it as Banville's best novel so far. Its lack of popularity mainly lies in the novel's sharp contrast with the popular novels, which can win recognition among a great number of readers with their sensational plots and unrealistic characterization. Banville defies popular art and sticks to his own writing principles while not caring about the sales of his books. The first impression The Sea makes on the readers is that of familiarity which derives from some great modernist masters such as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov, whose literary works belong to the category of high-ground art. Living in a postmodern era, Banville has been firmly accepted as a postmodern novelist. However, due to his indebtedness to the above-mentioned modernist writers, he consequentially employs the skills from modernism in writing The Sea.The thesis is consisted of five chapters. In the first chapter, some general information about the author and the novel is brought forward; furthermore, Ihab Hassan's viewpoint that postmodernism is a continuation of modernism will be adopted to analyze this novel in the light of both modernism and postmodernism. In the second and the third chapter, attention will be focused on narrative and linguistic strategies; in this novel there are not only typical postmodernist skills such as metafiction, but it also employs some techniques typical of modernist novels, such as stream of consciousness, parody, and literary allusions,etc. In the fourth chapter, modernist themes including modern man's alienation and musings about mortality are analyzed. In the final chapter, according to the above analysis, a conclusion is drawn that Banville employs both modernist techniques and postmodernist techniques to demonstrate modernist themes. Therefore, The Sea is an infusion of both modernism and postmodernism.