Faculté des Lettres et des Langues

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Browsing Faculté des Lettres et des Langues by Author "CHEBEL Meriem"

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    Maturity from the 'Many' to the 'Few': The Search for the Existential Authentic Self in John Fowles' Early Fiction
    (2022-01-01) CHEBEL Meriem
    This dissertation studies the existential journey taken by John Fowles’s characters and himself in his early fiction, as well as Fowles’s own conception of authenticity through the ‘Many’ and the ‘Few’. Our choice in the writer’s early fiction is not random; Fowles’s first three novels focus on the thematic importance of existentialism. Fowles starts his journey by highlighting an importance of an epistemologically based work of art. However, the inclusion of the collection of short stories, which rather shifts the thematic attention from existentialism to the nature of fiction, is aimed to study the reasons for the shift. Fowles shows less inclination to creating existential quests in his The Ebony Tower. The reason is not clearly stated by him. The research’s main undertaking lies in analyzing this shift. The existential quest, including the author’s representation of the Many and the Few, has been already examined by former critics, yet its relation to the artist’s aesthetic integrity is yet to be focused on. The main question of the research is whether Fowles’s discussion of the theme of existential authenticity affects his own authenticity as an artist or not. In other words, which characters make Fowles’s art more authentic, the inauthentic Many or the authentic Few? Fowles’s definition of an authentic artist is believed to be an artist that survives the ‘nemo’. The latter is a concept that is very important to answer the main question of the research. The nemo is an unconscious state, in addition to the id, ego, and super ego, of ‘nobodiness’ that the individual self goes through. It is similar to Sartre’s existential angst. The key to creating good art lies in defying the nemo. The latter should not be defied by imitation or ‘making it new’. Both methods show a fear of extinction, for the main reason to defy the nemo is to survive time. The best method, according to Fowles, is to embrace that state by representing a timeless human condition in an aesthetically appealing medium. An authentic art is an art that balances an epistemological end with a consistent form. The major contradiction which defines Fowles’s art is its categorization as postmodernistic. iv Postmodernism aims for an ontological rather than an epistemological end, and its main method of defying the nemo lies in the continuing purpose of further ‘making it new’. Our analysis of Fowles’s work shows that he creates existentially free, rather than authentic, characters. The product of that existential freedom is inconcrete. The main protagonists who go for an existential quest are mostly lost at the end after a heavily didactic guidance, which results in the absurd. It is Fowles’s inauthentic characters that restore the aesthetic balance to his art, for they are the most aesthetically free since they survive the author’s will to control through his obsession with the mission to teach. Didacticism is not the only failure in Fowles’s pursuit of embodying his vision of a good artist; his conception of the Many and the Few displays an elitist discourse that further distances the reader from relating to his promoted group of the existentially authentic. The reader, thus, develops an unexpected sympathy towards the less celebrated Many. These two aesthetic failures have been compensated by embracing the ontological rather than the epistemological in the thematic shift from existentialism to the nature of fiction. Fowles gives up on meaning and changes his principles in what defines good art. He is at his best when he subversively experiments. However, the timeless condition that Fowles unconsciously represents, and which unexpectedly defies the nemo, is the condition of the contemporary artist with the mission of surviving his ancestors’ heavy artistic heritage.