چكيده
Contrary to the conventions of traditional narrative, postmodernist literature produced texts that questioned and violated such conventions so that fragmentation, intertextuality, and discontinuity characterize so much of experimental postmodernist literature. As a postmodern writer, John Barth wrote his two essays, “The Literature of Exhaustion” and “The Literature of Replenishment,” which may be read as possible manifestoes of postmodern literature. He also wrote short stories and novels in which basic features of postmodern fiction, i.e. Temporal Disorder, Erosion of the Sense of Time, Pastiche, Fragmentation, Looseness of Association, Paranoia, and Vicious Circle were applied. In his first novel, The Floating Opera, some features of postmodern fiction are dominant. The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to take the said novel under consideration in order to highlight the postmodern features concerning Erosion of the Sense of Time, Fragmentation, Looseness of Association, and Paranoia employed by the novelist which rendered him as the first American postmodern writer and his novel, The Floating Opera, as the basis of postmodern literature.
