존 바스의 『염소 소년 자일스』

John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy: A Rewritten Tale of Traditional Myths

This paper discusses John Barth’s significant parody and alteration of historical or legendary material, that is, traditional hero myths. All of Barth’s novels operate on the assumption that the novel is dead and therefore mock both its own subject matter and itself. Giles Goat-Boy goes even further, suggesting that now the form must revert to its mixed origins and mock even those. It thus self-consciously parodies traditional hero myths to satirize present-day impersonalized universities and computerized lives. George, the protagonist of the novel, is associated closely with Oedipus and also parallels Christ in many ways. But throughout the process toward heroic achievements, Barth questions the problem of Messianic redemption, implying that a hero is not always a savior. This book is not just the traditional heroic journey of the knight in pursuit of a divine object but the modern search of identity of the existential antihero. Barth, by distorting and dissembling hero myths recorded by his predecessors and by using comic and ribald situation, vulgar and secular diction, scatological imagery, self-reflexive elements, and tragic ending, creates a renewed mythic tale in his own style and offers a new approach to literature.