SOURCE: "Conclusion," in Form and Meaning in the Novels of John Fowles, UMI Research Press, 1989, pp. 165-74.

In the excerpt below, Onega examines the major themes and structural devices of Fowles's novels.

[The different trends at work in the contemporary English novel from the fifties onwards involve] the steady evolution from the "angry" reaction against experimentalism in the 1950s to a new form of experimentation best described as an overriding concern with the nature of fiction and reality. This concern has led in recent decades to a new kind of experimental writing, characterized by its self-conscious and systematic concern with its own status as an artifact and with the relationships between fiction and reality.

This general scheme is perfectly applicable to the literary evolution of John Fowles, who, with his double training in English realism and French experimentalism, seems as concerned with writing about the real as he...