Dialogue Between Epigraphs And Text

John Fowels is considered as a bright star in British contemporary literature and regarded as one of the most outstanding post-modern novelists in the 20th century. His works, The Collector, The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman have always been the interest and the concern of critics both domestic and abroad. His masterpiece, The French Lieutenant's Woman is regarded as a post-modern classic by critics and has been studied by many researchers with respect to the novel's theme as well as its distinctive form. Among them, some researchers have studied it from the aspect of intertextuality. The previous researches concerning the aspect of intertextuality of the novel focus mainly on the five devices of intertextual theory—collage, allusion, quotation, parody and pastiche and try to trace the origins of the novel both from its theme and form as well.One of the significant features of this novel is that there is at least one epigraph in front of each chapter and the epigraphs cover a wide range of fields, such as philosophy, science, literature, advertisement, folk songs and so on. This paper chooses three main kinds of epigraphs—philosophy, science and literature which outnumber other categories and tries to explore the relationship between the epigraphs and the text from the dialogue between literature and philosophy, the dialogue between literature and science and the dialogue between literature of the nineteenth century and literature of the twentieth century. The present paper finds that John Fowles confirms, or disproves the ideologies the epigraphs present with the development of the characters and plot. He shows his confirmative attitude toward Marx's class struggle by confirming the wild existence of class struggle in his description of the characters but doubts the severity of class struggle and disproves Marx's theory of revolution with respect to its violent nature; he confirms Charles Darwin's ideas of heredity and variation and partially confirms his idea of struggle for existence and natural selection, but shows his negative attitude towards Darwin's idea of vertical evolution; he confirms traditional themes and fights back John Bath's declaration of"death of literature"by borrowing the traditional theme in his own novel, but disproves the"omniscient God"position of writers and the passive position of readers. This research on the relationship between the epigraphs and the text will certainly contribute to a new method for exploring the philosophical, scientific and literary value of The French Lieutenant's Woman.