| This study explores the reader-writer relationship in two novels by John Barth, Tidewater Tales: A Novel and The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor. The theoretical foundations debating the roles of the text, the writer and the reader provide a framework by which to examine how Barth's works, as postmodern texts, represent an aesthetic response to a century of literary theory. I argue that Barth provides his reader with a variety of possible constructs for the narrative relationship and that only by creating a metaphorical relationship with the author and entering a dialogue with past and present texts can a reader achieve Barth's ultimate goal-story as procreation. |
