Open AccessDenying history or defying History? John Fowles’s A maggot and the postmodernist novel
Author(s) -
Michaël Marais
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
literator
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.126
H-Index - 4
eISSN - 2219-8237
pISSN - 0258-2279
DOI - 10.4102/lit.v12i3.770
Subject(s) - narrative , contest , reflexivity , power (physics) , construct (python library) , reading (process) , interrogation , representation (politics) , literature , aesthetics , philosophy , epistemology , sociology , psychoanalysis , history , art , psychology , law , linguistics , theology , anthropology , politics , computer science , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , political science , programming language
This paper takes issue with accusations that postmodernist fiction neglects or refuses to engage with history. I offer a reading of John Fowles’s A maggot which demonstrates how postmodernist novels, by way of a self-reflexive interrogation of their own narrative foundation, contest history’s master status and expose the latter’s similar dependence on narrative modes of totalizing representation. Such a demystification process, I maintain, prompts a recognition of the provisional status of history as a human construct, thus undermining its power of totalization and opening it up to rewriting