Description

John Barth is an amazingly versatile nov­elist who has attempted every imaginable fictional genre from word games to a tale told by a computer. Jac Tharpe’s brilliant analysis is the first and only comprehen­sive study to date to attempt to chart Barth’s philosophical, comic, and stylistic development.

Ranging through the entire corpus of Barth’s work—The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, Lost in the Funhouse,and Chimera—Tharpe assesses Barth’s achievement as a completely intellectual yet marvelously carnal comic writer. Es­pecially valuable is his investigation of Barth’s language and artistic technique.

About the Author

Jac Tharpe is Honors Professor of Eng­lish at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Praise For…

“Tharpe has written a concise, very knowledgeable, and sometimes even profound philosophical statement on Barth’s intellectual concerns and how his prose articulates them. . . . Tharpe has the corpus of Barth’s fiction under control as few critics do and . . . he can discuss it with confidence that one responds to.”

—Modern Fiction Studies

“[Tharpe] produces a rare kind of criticism that not only illuminates a difficult subject, but also reflects an agonized sharing of problems analogous to the subject’s that he conquers through a similar mastery of craft.”—Warren French, American Literature