Carnival And Polyphony In The Magus

John Fowles (1926—2005) is regarded as one of the major postmodernist novelists in contemporary Britain. Although The Magus is Fowles’s second published novel, it is actually Fowles’s virgin work. After being published in1965, Fowles kept revising it until the second version came out in1977. As it is, this novel most explicitly expresses Fowles’s belief in and emphasis on freedom. Indeed, critics abroad and at home have been focusing on the existential freedom in The Magus. However, this thesis starts with a study of The Aristos, Fowles’s philosophical work, exploring the influence of Bakhtinian dialogism on Fowles’s artistic creation, and then demonstrates the dialogic spirit related to the thematic freedom in The Magus in the light of polyphony and carnival.Introduction includes a review of current studies of The Magus, a brief introduction of Bakhtinian theory of carnival and polyphony, and the arrangement of chapters.Chapter One traces the dialogic spirit of Fowles’s fiction back to The Aristos, a philosophical self-portrait of Fowles. Fowles now and again claims that he prefers to be a philosopher rather than a novelist. Indeed, if Fowles’s novel is bewildering, his notions of art are more manifestly expressed in his philosophical book of The Aristos. Therefore, this chapter, by focusing on the study of The Aristos, sorts out Fowles’s comments on the relationship between the Many and the Few, the female and the male, death and rebirth. Although scientism and elite culture are prevailing in postwar western societies, Fowles believes that the female, the Many and the sensuality are closer to the real life and the truth. Therefore, only through the tolerance and respects for all that is other can we enter a domain of freedom in its true sense. It is obvious that the study of The Aristos can contribute to a better understanding of the recurring "dialogic spirit" in Fowles’s novels. Chapter Two expounds the carnivalesque spirit in The Magus. In this novel, both characters and events are characteristic of duality. In the dichotomy of mind and body, death and rebirth, and crowning and decrowning, Fowles obviously favors the latter in which they reside a subversive potential. When all that is abstract is degraded to the level of material and flesh, Nicholas manages to restore an awareness of life and to undergo a renewal and growth.Chapter Three analyses the art of polyphony in The Magus, which is demonstrated in the overall dialogue between characters, between Nicholas and his self, and between one text and another. Fowles gives up his control of the text so as to activate a great dialogue of characters. In the case of Nicholas’s growth, a micro-dialogue occurs between the narrating self and the experiencing self. In addition, the juxtaposition of diverse narrative voices and the inter-reference of The Magus and Shakespeare’s Othello frustrate any conspiracy of monologue, only to make this book more polyphonic.In sum, the employment of polyphony and carnival enforces the indeterminacy and the subversive energy of this novel, and furthermore highlights its theme of freedom.