Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1984

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

John Barth's Sabbatical: A Romance parodies both Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and the genre of sea fiction. Through careful attention to the sea fiction tradition, its metaphors of sea, ship, and voyage as microcosm, Barth examines the function of myth in life. Parallels in form, structure, content, and theme establish the use of contemporary anxieties as symbols for the universal forces opposing humanity. Sabbatical illustrates the correlated dualities of the mundane and fantastic, reality and the imagination, and society and the individual. Allusions to Poe, and to Pym, substantiate this re generation of myth. Both wandering hero myths apply the fantastic, the doppelganger, and gothic romance in elevating the artist to immortality throu g h the narrator's act of articulation. The voyage of the protagonists is illustrative of their passage through life. Therefore, Barth's cyclic regeneration attempts to explore the convergence of polarities inherent in all literature.

Extent

69 p.

Comments

FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1984.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Identifier

FADT14191

Format

pdf

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