The Sot-Weed Factor is a flamboyant imitation of an eighteenth-century novel. The narrator adopts the tone and locutions of period narrators, and his descriptions of early colonial life in Maryland and life in London are designed to recall descriptions from the literature of the time. However, the importance of this narrative strategy is twofold and distinctly contemporary: On the one hand, this parodic imitation of an earlier novelistic style draws the reader's attention to the conventional nature of narrative; on the other hand, the density of authentic historical detail suggests to the reader that Barth is recreating a plausible, although wildly humorous, colonial milieu. By exploiting the tension between these competing claims, Barth suggests the absence of any but a fictional order and at the same time the compelling necessity for choice and action as suggested by the realistic aspects of the novel.

One...