Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1996

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Faraci, Mary

Abstract

This thesis is a comparative study of John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, based on the imagery and theme of Borges's "forking paths." Both authors are indebted to Borges's work for providing the experimental narrative devices that made it possible for them to challenge their "ghosts." In Barth's case, he loses himself in the Funhouse, haunted by the "same old stories" (102); Kingston finds her voice in the Chinese stories and shocking images of the past. The thesis will work toward a presentation of the dramatic performances and brilliant images in Barth's Lost in the Funhouse and in Kingston's The Woman Warrior. Readers become players who surrender their conventional notions about narrative in Borges's "Garden of the Forking Paths." Fortunately, the writing of Barth and Kingston continues to keep storytelling a lively art where time and memory are the main characters.

Extent

89 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1996.|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT15329

Format

pdf

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