John Barth's Conception Of Literary Creation Exemplified In Chimera

John Barth's lectures and essays best manifest his literary ideas. And most of his works are characteristically marked by an intense concern with the process of writing itself and explicitly exemplify his literary ideas. Barth's Chimera is one of the best examples. It extremely focuses on literary creation, rather more self-conscious than his any other novel and becomes a novel of ideas.This thesis intends to study Chimera for the exploration of Barth's conception of literary creation concerning how to transcend exhaustion of traditional narrative possibilities and the sibling-like relationships between art and life, writer and reader and technique and passions by closely analyzing the text and with the combination of his thinking and the theory of the self-conscious novel. The process of writing about exhaustion illustrated by the characters'crises and its key solution of creating new stories out of old ones revealed in their efforts to overcome their difficulties prove to be the best exemplification of Barth's conception of literary creation on transcending the exhaustion crisis. Additionally, Chimera rather self-consciously exemplifies Barth's conception of literary creation on the sibling-like relationships between dual factors on writing, including the interaction of art and life (fiction and reality), harmony between writer and reader and combination of technique and passions. For Barth, writing itself is not alone, only concerning one aspect of each pair. Both aspects are interrelated and mutually influenced like siblings and indispensable to literary creation.In conclusion, Chimera is an integration of Barth's literary ideas about exhaustion and the sibling-like relationships between dual factors on writing, exemplifying his profound considerations on literary creation as a serious writer. Via the analysis of Barth's conception of literary creation exemplified in Chimera, the present author intends to make a new opening to the study of John Barth and invite more discussions and deeper understanding of Barth's complex and difficult fiction.