The Image of Man in Metafictional Novels by John Banville: Celebrating the Power of the Imagination

• Authors: Maciej Czerniakowski

Title variants

PL

Obraz człowieka w powieściach metafikcyjnych Johna Banville’a: Pochwała siły wyobraźni

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The essay titled “The Image of Man in Metafictional Novels by John Banville: Celebrating the Power of the Imagination” analyzes how John Banville reconstructs the image of man in his two novels Kepler and Doctor Copernicus by means of broadly understood metafiction. The Author of the essay discusses the following elements: implied author’s and narrator’s power of creative imagination and Rheticus’s self-consciousness which enables to create fiction and intertextuality of the novel. When analyzing the last aspect of the novels, the Author mentions also Michel Foucault’s term, heterotopia. The results of this analysis are twofold. On the one hand, man has got practically unlimited creative imagination on their part. On the other hand, man seems to be lost in the world of unclear ontological boundaries, which proves a paradoxical image of man.

PL

Artykuł, zatytułowany „Obraz człowieka w powieściach metafikcyjnych Johna Banville’a: pochwała siły wyobraźni” analizuje sposób w jaki John Banville, poprzez elementy charakterystyczne dla szeroko rozumianej metafikcji, stara się zrekonstruować obraz człowieka w powieściach: Kepler i Doctor Copernicus. Autor eseju kolejno omawia: siłę kreatywnej wyobraźni domniemanego autora i narratora oraz samoświadomość jednej z postaci, Rheticusa, w tworzeniu fikcji oraz intertekstualność powieści. Przy okazji analizy ostatniego aspektu utworów, wspomniany zostaje również termin Michela Foucault, heterotopia. Wnioski o człowieku, do jakich prowadzi ta analiza, pokazują, że z jednej strony dysponuje on praktycznie nieograniczoną wyobraźnią twórczą. Z drugiej zaś, człowiek jest zagubiony w świecie niewyraźnych granic ontologicznych, co udowadnia dość paradoksalną wizję człowieka.

Keywords

EN

postmodernism; metafiction; creative imagination; intertextuality; heterotopia

PL

postmodernism; metafikcja; wybraźnia twórcza; intertekstualność; heterotopia

• Publisher: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II. Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL
• Journal: Roczniki Humanistyczne
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 61
• Issue: 5: Neofilologia
• Pages: 209-223

Contributors

author

Maciej Czerniakowski

• Institute of English Philology, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

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