RE-READING THE VICTORIAN AND CREATING THE POSTPOSTMODERN IN THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN BY JOHN FOWLES
RE-READING THE VICTORIAN AND CREATING THE POSTPOSTMODERN IN THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN BY JOHN FOWLES

Summary/Abstract: John Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman is often considered as a paradigmatic postmodernist text which combines deconstruction of history with a metafictional self-conscious narrative. Set in the ninetieth century and written in second half of the twentieth, it contrasts and compares two ages, providing illuminating insights into both. Furthermore, along with blending two historically and culturally different worlds, this novel also blends two forms of the novel: the Victorian – by imitating its style and literary conventions, and the postmodern – by self-reflective theoretizing about its own status. This article, therefore, examines the interaction between the two ages in terms of both their social and literary realities, underlining in particular how reading of the literary past in The French Lieutenant’s Woman leads not only to a better understanding of the present (Fowles’s own, as well our own present), but also towards creating future literary tendencies, evident now in what is frequently called the postpostmodern novel.

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