John Barth
John Barth was the central figure of American postmodern fiction, whose The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy deployed irony, parody, and self-conscious narrative to reinvent the novel. Lost in the Funhouse defined metafiction for a generation.
Works
- The Sot-Weed FactorPicaresque colonial adventure parodying eighteenth-century literary conventions and history
- Giles Goat-BoyMetafictional epic rewriting the Oedipus myth as university allegory
- Lost in the FunhousePostmodern story cycle exploring narrative structure and text within text
- ChimeraNovella pair retelling Perseus and Bellerophon myths in contemporary fragmented form
- LETTERSEpistolary novel spanning four centuries of American literary and historical figures