Double Coding in John Banville’s ‘Mefisto’ (1999)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22364/BJELLC.13.2023.03Keywords:
double coding, John Banville, the Faust legend, MefistoAbstract
The present paper examines how John Banville creates a peculiar version of the Faust legend in his novel Mefisto (1999) through the use of double coding. The term is frequently used in postmodern art, especially in literary theory and architecture. The idea consists of the possibility of sending two opposite or even multiple messages at once. Mefisto presents a fertile ground for the analysis of the way double coding might operate in a work of postmodernist fiction. Moreover, it has been one of the most challenging contemporary interpretations of the Faust legend for critics and, therefore, the present analysis has more specific relevance for those who are already taking interest in Banville’s oeuvre and/or in the Faust legend. For those who are yet to discover Banville, the article may serve as a short introduction to his idiosyncratic artistic style and peculiar means of expression. The ensuing analysis of double coding in Mefisto has the task of demonstrating that both a metanarrative appeal and a quotation/irony combination are clearly detectable in the novel. The aspiration is also to stress that Eco’s approach to the definition of double coding is more in-depth and more relevant for literary theory or postmodernism than Jencks’s one.
References
Bakhtin, M. (1981) Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel. In M. Holquist (ed.) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (pp. 84-258.) Austin: University of Texas Press.
Barry, P. (2002) Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press: Manchester and New York.
Barthes, R. (1990) S/Z. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Coleridge, S. (2004) Biographia Literaria. Available from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6081/6081-h/6081-h.htm [Accessed on 10 January 2022].
Davies, N. (1999) The Isles: A History. USA: Oxford University Press.
Eco, U. (2011) Confessions of a Young Novelist. London: Harvard University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674060876
Eco, U. (1990) Introduction. In Y. Lotman. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. (pp. vii-xiii.) Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Eco, U. (1984) Postscript to The Name of the Rose. San Diego: Harcourt.
Fowler, R. (1997) A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms. Routledge: London and New York.
Howard, R. (1990) Foreword. A Note on S/Z. In R. Barthes. S/Z (pp. vii-x.) Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Jencks, C. (2002) The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Postmodernism. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Jencks, C. (1997) The Architecture of the Jumping Universe. Chichester: Academy Editions.
Lotman, Y. (1990) Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
McMinn, J. (1988) An Exalted Naming: The Poetical Fictions of John Banville. The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 14: 17-27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/25512722
O’Connell, M. (2013) John Banville’s Narcissistic Fictions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137365248
Prince, G. (ed.) (1989) A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Quinn, E. (2006) A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms. New York: Facts on File.
Rudwin, M. (1973) The Devil in Legend and Literature. La Salle: Open Court Publishing Company.
Silverman, H. (1986) What is textuality? Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 4: 54-61. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29173/pandp15010
Wolfreys, J. (ed.) (2002) The Continuum Encyclopedia of Modern Criticism and Theory. New York: Continuum.
INTERNET SOURCES
[Online 1] Available from https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jun/29/john-banvill-life-in-writing [Accessed on 19 September 2022].
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 University of Latvia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
