Sodikova Bakhtigul Ibodullayevna, JTAS, 2020 3:18 Review Article JTAS (2020) 3:18 Journal of Theoretical and Applied Sciences (ISSN:2637-692X) JOHN FOWLES’ CONTRIBUTION TO POSTMODERN LITERATURE Sodikova Bakhtigul Ibodullayevna Department of Interfaculty, Termez branch of Tashkent state Pedagogical University named after Nizami , Uzbekistan ABSTRACT The term of postmodernism suggests that the period came after *Correspondence to Author: modernism (since the 70-90ss of the 20th century). Postmodern Sodikova Bakhtigul Ibodullayevna texts are marked by the mixture of times, cultures, languages, Department of Interfaculty, Termez real facts and fiction, the present and the past. Postmodern branch of Tashkent state Pedagogi- literature is presented by such key figures in English literature cal University named after Nizami , as John Fowels , Julian Barns, Doris Lessing, A.S. Byatt, Pe- Uzbekistan ter Ackroyd, G. Swift, etc. Out of them we have chosen John Fowels’ novels because of his originality, versatility and skill How to cite this article: were nowhere more evident than in his most celebrated novels, Sodikova Bakhtigul Ibodullayevna. among them “The Collector,” “The Magus” and “«The French JOHN FOWLES’ CONTRIBUTION Lieutenant’s Woman».” In “«The French Lieutenant’s Woman»,” TO POSTMODERN LITERATURE. for example, he combined the melodrama of a 19th-century Vic- Journal of Theoretical and Applied torian novel with the sensibility of a 20th-century postmodern Sciences, 2020, 3:18 narrator, offering his readers two alternative endings from which to choose and at one point boldly inserting himself into the book as a character who accompanies the hero on a train to London. His teasing, multilayered fiction explored the tensions between free will and the constraints of society, even as it played with eSciPub LLC, Houston, TX USA. traditional novelistic conventions and challenged readers to find Website: https://escipub.com/ their own interpretations. Keywords: postmodern literature , the Collector , Hero, fiction, autobiographical , nonfiction JTAS: https://escipub.com/journal-of-theoretical-and-applied-sciences/ 1 Sodikova Bakhtigul Ibodullayevna, JTAS, 2020 3:18 John Fowels (born 1926) was an award win-ning English literary circles—where he wrote, gar- post World War II novelist of major im-portance. dened, and pursued his interests in natural and John Fowels was born on March 31, 1926, to local history. middle-class parents living in a small London Fowels worked on several manuscripts but was suburb. He attended a London prepar-atory dissatisfied with his efforts and submitted none school, the Bedford School, between the ages of for publication until 1963, when «The Collector» 14 and 18. He then served as a lieu-tenant in the appeared. «The Collector» is the story of Fred- Royal Marines for two years, but World War II erick Clegg, a poorly educated clerk of the lower- ended before he saw actual com-bat 1. class and an amateur lepidopterist, who be- Following the war, Fowels studied French and comes obsessed with a beautiful young art stu- German at New College, Oxford. He later re- dent, Miranda Grey. In "The Collector," Mr. Fow- ferred to this period as "three years of heaven in els painted an eerily plausible portrait of a psy- an intellectual sense," and it was during this time chopath who kidnaps a young woman out of that he was exposed to the Celtic romances and what he imagines is love, telling the story from the existential works of Albert Camus and Jean- the two characters' opposing points of view until, Paul Sartre. After graduating from Oxford, Fow- at the end, the narratives converge with a shock- els began a teaching career that took him first to ing immediacy. "The Collector" became a 1965 France where he taught English at the University film directed by William Wyler, starring Terence of Poiters and then to Spetsai, a Greek island, Stamp as Clegg and Samantha Eggar as Mi- where he taught at Anorgyrios College. It was on randa. Spetsai that Fowels met Elizabeth Whitton. Fowels' next published work, The Magus, was, Three years later, on April 2, 1954, they were according to its author, "in every way except that 3 married in England. of mere publishing date … a first novel." Using Mr. Fowels, who started writing in his early 20's, Spetsai as his model, Fowels created the island wrote: "I began because I have always found it of Phraxos where Nicholas Urfe, a young Eng- easy to fantasize, to invent situations and plau- lish schoolmaster, meets Maurice Conchis, the sible dialogue; partly because I have always re- enigmatic master of an island estate. Through a jected so much of the outward life I have had to series of bizarre "godgames," Conchis engi- lead. In one way at least teaching is a good pro- neers the destruction of Nicholas' perception of fession for a writer, because it gives him a sharp reality, a necessary step in the achievement of a sense of futility."2 true understanding of his being in the world. His earliest literary efforts were marked by false While The Magus was first published in 1965, starts and stops, as he discarded many manu- Fowels issued a revised edition in 1977 in which scripts that he thought weren't good enough for he had rewritten numerous scenes in an attempt publication. He honed his craft by studying and to purify the work he called an "endlessly tor- 4 imitating writers he admired, including Flaubert, tured and recast cripple" which had, nonethe- D. H. Lawrence, Defoe and Hemingway. In less, "aroused more interest than anything else I 5 1963, he began work on "The Magus," his sec- have written." ond novel, and published his first, "The Collec- And in "The Magus," the story of a young Eng- tor." lishman who gets caught up in the frightening Fowels continued to earn a living through a vari- dramatic fantasies of a strangely powerful man ety of teaching assignments until the success of on an Aegean island, he again wrote an ending his first published work, The Collector, allowed of self-conscious ambiguity, leaving the hero's him to retire with his wife and her daughter to future an open puzzle that readers are chal- Lyme Regis in Dorset. He continued to live in this lenged to solve for themselves. quiet sea-coast town—intentionally isolated from "The Magus" was more complicated and opaque than its predecessor, leading its hero, an English JTAS: https://escipub.com/journal-of-theoretical-and-applied-sciences/ 2 Sodikova Bakhtigul Ibodullayevna, JTAS, 2020 3:18 schoolteacher named Nicholas Urfe, to a remote Victorian novel in manner and mores, but con- Greek island and putting him at the mercy of the temporary and existential in viewpoint. Fowels' elaborate fantasies, or "godgame," concocted by rejection of the posture of omniscient narrator the title character, the rich, mysterious Maurice exhorted both characters and readers to grapple Conchis. ("Magus" means sorcerer or conjurer.) with possibilities and to grow through the pursu- There, Urfe begins to doubt what is real and ance of mystery which "pours energy into who- what is fiction, and is forced, agonizingly, to ever seeks the answer to it."9 The novel was question who he is. made into a popular film of the same name in Some critics complained that the novel was an 1981. He was best known for his next novel, overcomplicated pretension. But others took its "«The French Lieutenant’s Woman»" (1969), part with passion, saying Mr. Fowels had more which Karel Reisz made into a successful movie than succeeded in using the novel to illustrate in 1981, starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, the existential dilemma of life: that people must from a screenplay by Harold Pinter. The book, decide for themselves how to act in the face of set in 1867, tells the story of Charles Smithson, absurd, unpredictable circumstances. a gentleman geologist (as was Mr. Fowels) in Mr. Fowels wrote the screenplay for the film ver- Lyme Regis and a budding adherent of the the- sion of "The Magus," starring Anthony Quinn and ories of Charles Darwin. Engaged to a young Michael Caine, but considered it a disaster and woman of his class and station, Smithson finds vowed never to write another script from his himself drawn to a willful governess who has work. been wooed and abandoned by a French sailor. He once told an interviewer that he had received On the surface, the story seems classically Vic- a sweet letter from a cancer patient in New York torian, with elaborate 19th-century language, who wanted very much to believe that Nicholas, highly wrought plot twists and extensive epi- the protagonist of "The Magus," was reunited graphs introducing each chapter. with his girlfriend at the end of the book -- a point But the book's narrator is straight from the Mr. Fowels had deliberately left ambiguous. 1960's, and it is his all-knowing voice -- con- "Yes, of course they were,"6 Mr. Fowels replied. stantly interrupting the narrative with mini-lec- By chance, he had received a letter the same tures on extra-textual subjects, freely discussing day from an irate reader taking issue with the people who haven't been born and historical ending of "The Magus." "Why can't you say what events that haven't yet happened -- that makes you mean, and for God's sake, what happened "The French Lieutenant’s Woman" so unusual. in the end?" the reader asked. Mr. Fowels said Along the way, the reader is treated to the nar- he found the letter "horrid" but had the last laugh, rator's -- that is, Mr. Fowels's -- views on Victo- supplying an alternative ending to punish the rian England, Freud, Marx, the dilemma of the correspondent: "They never saw each other modern novelist and 20th-century existential again."7 despair10.