A Study On Deviances In John Banville’s Confessioanl Novels

John Banville is an important contemporary Irish experimental writer after JamesJoyce and Samuel Beckett. His writing hall mark is first-person narrative mode. TheBook of Evidence, The Untouchable and Shroud are three confessional novels narratedin first-person narrative mode. But their forms, as Banville’s writing style is betweenmodernist and postmodernist, deviate from the traditional confessional texts.The Book of Evidence is a fake confessional novel under the form of a confession,the deviances of which, from the traditional confessional texts, mainly represent in itslacking of authenticity and its amorality. The metafictional elements, the uncertaintyof language and the psychiatric patient confessant of narcissism help to reduce theauthenticity of the confession. The novel’s moral stand is amoral. Freddie does notconfess his crime of murder, but skillfully transforms his crime of murder to the sin oflacking imagination, which consists of the theme of the novel that is the relationshipbetween imagination and art. And it is because Freddie’s sin is lack of imagination, sothat he is the only confessant among the three ones discussed in this dissertation whohas the opportunity to redeem. He redeems his sin in the companion columns Ghostsand Athena.The Untouchable in its essence is an excuse rather than a confession, whichviolates the traditional confessional texts by its lack of self-restoration, redemptionand a negative confessional object. The confession is presented in the form ofhistoriographic metafiction. It turns the history of the Second World War to thepersonal history of the spy Victor Maskell, which overturns the official historyadmitted by the British government. But in the process of confession, Maskell’s selfexperiences a split. He could not get a self-restoration that a confession is supposed togive. The identity “spy” is imposed on him by the British government, which is apower discourse determining that Maskell’s confession can never be absolved and hecannot be redeemed; therefore, the confessor in this novel is a functional one whoonly helps to push the development of plot and end the confession. When heconfesses, Maskell introduces other art forms like painting and drama in the discourse. These languages aestheticize the confessional object and reduce the power ofconfession, but the entering of other art forms produces a carnivalesque effect thatgives revival to language and realizes the postmodernist sublime.Shroud is the only genuine confession among the three novels, whose deviancesare mainly embodied in its narrative mode. It has a unique double-confessionstructure. In chapter one and chapter three, Axel Vander confesses his love towardCass, while in chapter two, he confesses his theft of his friend’s identity and how hesurvives by the fake name. There is a mysterious third-person narrator in this novel,which is against the normal first-person narrator form of a confessional novel.Meanwhile, this novel has two confessors at the same time. One is the absent Cassand the other is the present Dr. Zoroaster. The absent Cass absolves part of Vander’ssin by her actions, while the present Dr. Zoroaster does not absolve him. When Vanderconfesses to Dr. Zoroaster, he confides his love toward Cass purposely, so that hisconfession is not a complete one. Furthermore, in addition to the theft of identity, healso steals something else during his life and tells lies. When he confesses his lovetoward Cass, he recalls his dead wife who is neglected by him when she was alive andbegins to take care of his former dying lover Kristina. All these factors make itdifficult to judge whether Vander gets redemption or not, but they surely add morecharms to the novel’s readability.Through close reading and the comparison with the definition and requirementsof the religious confession and the classical confession writings, this dissertationargues that Banville’s confessional novels have already transgressed the traditionalmode of an authentic confession, a sincere confessant and a possible redemption. Andalso, by using Patrick Waugh’s metafictional theory, Freud’s psychoanalysis theory,Linda Hutcheon’s postmodernist poetics and George Steiner’s comment on languageand silence, this dissertation explains the feasibility of the deviances in Banville’sconfessional novels, and proves that these deviances are writer’s innovative efforts totransgress the limitations of classical confessional texts. These deviances enlarge thecapacity of a confessional novel, allowing it to carry more themes than before, and aremore effective to express people’s spiritual statuses in a postmodernist society. It is this innovation that makes John Banville the most important experimental writer inIreland because innovation in literary form is the tendency of post-modernistliterature.