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THE DYNAMICS of INCOMPLETE CONSISTENCY in the NOVELS of JOHN BARTH by Sergio Luiz Prado Bellei a Dissertation Submitted to the F The dynamics of incomplete consistency in the novels of John Barth Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Bellei, Sérgio Luiz Prado Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 11/10/2021 04:03:13 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/565414 THE DYNAMICS OF INCOMPLETE CONSISTENCY IN THE NOVELS OF JOHN BARTH by Sergio Luiz Prado Bellei A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 19 7 8 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE I hereby recommend that this dissertation prepared under my direction by Sergio Luiz Prado Bellei__________________ entitled The Dynamics of Incomplete Consistency_______ in the Novels of John Barth___________________ be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy__________________________ i,7 Dissertation Director Date As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read this dissertation and agree that it may be presented for final defense. [/j ft? / 'y /7)m (A m s Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent on the candidate's adequate performance and defense thereof at the final oral examination. STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertaion has been submitted in partial ful­ fillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allow­ able without special permission, provided that accurate ac­ knowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the inter­ ests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, per­ mission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank John HoHowell, Wilfred Jewkes, Cecil Robinson, and particularly Suresh Raval for the time they spent helping me with this dissertation. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .............. v 1. INTRODUCTION ........... ....... 1 2. TWO NOVELS OF INNOCENCE ........... 37 3. INNOCENCE DISCOVERED ............... 88 4. THE BURDEN OF KNOWLEDGE .............. 131 5. THE MOEBIUS STRIP ................. 164 6. THE LOGARITHMIC SPIRAL • ..................... 211 7. INCONCLUSION ................... 246 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ............... 265 iv ABSTRACT "The Dynamics of Incomplete Consistency in the Nov­ els of John Barth" is an attempt to describe the non— realistic model of thought operating in Barth's work. The failure to recognize and adequately discuss the presence of such a model has led the majority of Barthian critics to a rejection of what seems to be a literature devoted to the game of writing literature. In Chapter 1, I discuss the basic assumptions under­ lying the dualistic system of realistic thought and the failure of such a system to come to grips with a literature which assumes that the world, or reality, is a text which the author must endlessly reconstruct without indulging in evaluative points of view. For Barth the concept of the world as a text allows the novelist aware of the evolution of the novel as a genre to continue writing after the death of realism. I define this concept in Barth's novels as a "system of incomplete consistency," a system in which the dualities of realism are replaced by the unity of a text to which the author must endlessly apply variations. The remaining chapters of the dissertation are de­ voted to the discussion of Barth's novels as systems of in­ complete consistency. Chapter 2 deals with Barth's two vi early novels as preparatory to the full treatment of incom­ plete consistency inasmuch as these novels evince an aware­ ness of language as a structure of possibilities which constantly distorts reality. Chapter 3 examines The Sot-Weed Factor as Barth's treatment of history as a system of incomplete consistency. Burlingame represents the cynical historian determined by a preexistent text but still capable of asserting himself by means of an activity of variation applied to the historical discourse. Eben, on the other hand, represents the poet and creative historian doomed to failure in his attempt to cre­ ate his own historical discourse. My discussion of Giles Goat-Boy in Chapter 4 exam­ ines the novel as an extension of The Sot-Weed Factor inso­ far as Giles deals with the problem of the creator reduced to the activity of combination characteristic of the editor. The story of the goat-boy is the story of an author who finally discovers that his role as author is illusory, that he is nothing but an editor entrapped by the incomplete con­ sistency of language. In Chapter 5, I discuss Lost in the Funhouse as a treatment of the education of the artist confronted with language as a system of incomplete consistency which finally determines his creative role as both active and passive. Language is ultimately seen in the book not as a medium vii which the artist uses to express himself but as a determin­ ing power which uses the artist to express itself. Chapter 6 is devoted to the relationship of teller, told, and tale in Chimera. This relationship is ultimately a love relation which takes place when the tale as an incom­ plete text leads teller and told to the rejection of the no­ tion of the self and unifies both in a final harmony. In the concluding chapter, I suggest that the mode Of writing proposed by Barth in "The Literature of Exhaus­ tion" and exemplified in his novels may well be an adequate response to the change of consciousness taking place in our time. For Barth's emphasis on myth and language as control­ ling powers determining the self parallels the tendency of. our age to acknowledge the death of anthrbpocentric, real­ istic humanism. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Since 1963, when critics identified Barth as a nov­ elist of ideas whose work evinced a concern with art as ar­ tifact and a pervasive disregard for the moral imagination, Barthian criticism has tried to come to grips with the prob­ lem of value in what seems to be a literature devoted to the game of writing literature. Critical approaches to Barth's works deal with the problem of literature as game by assum­ ing attitudes which emphasize one of the two complementary and inseparable activities of criticism, description and prescription. Both the descriptive and the prescriptive critic must necessarily describe, since description is nothing but the interaction of a language and a metalanguage and criticism is non-existent without a metalanguage, even if this metalanguage is labeled eclecticism. The prescrip­ tive critic, however, relies heavily on a well-established model defined by tradition and accepted by a critical com­ munity, a model which must be also defined in terms of his­ torical continuity in that it must accommodate change without ever losing its identity. Prescription begins in description, in the interaction of two discoursesi This interaction, moreover, is often assumed to be innocent, or 1 objective, since the presuppositions involved are seldom mentioned. But this description must inevitably lead to transcription, to the accommodation of the two discourses of language and metalanguage in such a way that the integrity of the model is preserved at all costs, even at the cost of rejection of the possible irreducible elements in the liter­ ary discourse. This rejection is often expressed in a final value judgment which is final not so much in terms of the description presented or of the linear seguency of the crit­ ical text as it is in terms of the prescribed model. If every prescription presupposes description, so, conversely, every description presupposes prescription inso­ far as the very choice of a model is already a prescription. The descriptive critic, however, although admitting the ne­ cessary presence of the model as a conditioning element, is not so much concerned with perpetuating the model but with using it as a probe, as a system of signification capable of producing equivalences, and therefore satisfactory, or in­ capable of doing so, and therefore useless. Description im­ plies a constant approximation of dissimilar discourses in an attempt to produce adequacy and the descriptive critic is more interested in testing new systems of signification, in inventing new words, than he is in preserving the tradition­ al system of approach. The emphasis here is not on a final value judgment but on understanding the literary discourse through description, a description which is uncommitted in the sense that its aim is to produce signification through interaction rather than to perpetuate a significance through partial absorption of new systems of meaning. The uses of criticism as probe and as prescription in the approach to the works of John Barth can be best il­ lustrated in the contrast between a critic like Richard W. Noland on the one hand, and Robert Scholes on the other, since in these two critics the two attitudes are evinced as polarities and are, therefore, easily identifiable. The emphasis on one attitude or the other, however, character­ izes the whole of Barthian criticism and prescriptive crit­ icism constitutes the rule rather than the exception. When the two attitudes appear side by side in the same critic, prescription tends to impose intense limitations of the de­ scriptive activity.
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