Sichuan International Studies University

Being situated in a postmodernist literary creating atmosphere,John Barth keenly feels 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. John Barth challenges the existing traditional form of modernism by his deliberate appearance in the novel. Once Upon a Time , one of his postmodernist masterpieces,is one of the results of his effort in this aspect. The book is overtly self-conscious with the highly skilled employment of metafiction, authorial intrusion and reader's participation. Its unique narrative techniques mix fictional world with real world, fictional time with narrative time, constructing a narrative labyrinth.This thesis consists of three chapters. At the beginning,a brief introduction to the author,the book, the critical reception and the main narrative theory used in this thesis are given.In the first chapter,comparing Once Upon a Time with traditional novel from aspects of structure, plot and character, it is obtained that this work is not a traditional novel. It has no unified structure, complete plot or round characters. The second and the third parts are the core of the thesis. Beginning with a close reading of the book as a searching game for exit of meaning, the next step is to subsequently give a rather detailed analysis of the unique narrative process and its narrative effect from perspectives of language, structure and narrative techniques. The main point highlighted in these parts is that the reason why it is a non-traditional work is because of the use of unique narrative devices.Through analyzing the narrative techniques in the narrative process and its role in the narrative effect, it shows that John Barth's Once Upon a Time: A Floating Opera is not a traditional novel but a narrative labyrinth made for readers, attracting readers' participation in searching for its meaning like the searching for exit of a labyrinth.