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Fowles \

Author: KangMing
Tutor: LiLanYu
School: Heilongjiang University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: John Fowles The Collector Polyphony
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Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2008
Downloads: 160
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Abstract

John Fowles is a brilliant jewel in post-war British literary circle. At the awkward time when everyone laments the novel has been dead, he earnestly practices what he advocates—innovation and reform of novels’contents and form. Generally speaking, the author’s aesthetic standards decide his writing style. John Fowles, who pursues for existentialism, has a weakness for the issue of“freedom”, and therefore his novels’topics are always related to man’s self-pursuit or inquiry into man’s status and value in contemporary society. Even his first novel The Collector, which is considered as a piece of popular writing by many critics, embodies profound moral significance. However, Fowles isn’t a preacher. In his novels, readers cannot find the dictatorial arbitrary“implied author”, who is able to intervene in everything; nor can they see those extremely kind or extremely vicious heroes that frequently appear in previous novels. Fowles designs a stable triangle structure for The Collector—the author, the hero, and the reader cooperate freely, and together model an equal free dialogical text.With the help of Mikhail Bakhtin’s polyphony theory, this thesis attempts to present the unique polyphonic features of The Collector. By adopting dual first-person perspective, Fowles ingeniously achieves“Great Dialogue”between Clegg and Miranda—the polyphony of characters. After an elaborate research on the text, the author summarizes two subjects exist four divergences: language style, telling mode, narrative purpose, and spiritual harvest. Triple narrative structure, juxtaposed narrative plots and split heroes are artistic embodiment of polyphonic novels. And contradictions of the character’s nature are basis of“Microdialogue”. Referring to the theory of intertextuality, the last part reveals The Collector’s allusion and parody to Shakespeare’s romance The Tempest. This practice not only successfully paves the way for two text’s dialogue, but also makes the polyphony between texts realizable.

Fowles \

Abstract

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