Postmodernism and multiple worlds in ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ by John Fowles

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to tackle what I consider to be the most important aspects of John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, exploring the concepts of existential authenticity, intertextual organization, temporal organization, space, historicity, materialized into a plethora of mythic quest archetypes in a Godgame literary manner. I will try to analyse these issues following two main coordinates: a horizontal one, as a matter of form, (aimed both at the literary analysis and the translation chapter), and a vertical, unseen part, that of metafiction and metalanguage. In a nutshell, all the elements that pinpoint Fowles’ uniqueness as a stunning novelist always fidgety and mischievous, always an eye-opener to his readers, never ceasing to amaze. The horizontal perspective, the form, could be used in class as basis for teaching translation or literature to bilingual classes.