"Magician": New Bildungsroman

John Fowles (1926-2005) is a British writer who took an illustrious position inthe world literature, his representative works include The French Lieutenants Woman,The Collector, The Magus and so on. The Magus, published at the second but wroteat the first in his writing life, has certain popularity in the West, but less Chineseknow it. This paper is just in order to make up for the blankness and shortness, andThe Magus is rarely regarded as a Bildungsroman, I think the novel is a new type ofBildungsroman, and my paper is just from this perspective.The paper mainly consists of introduction, text and epilogue. The introduction isdivided into two parts, the first part summarizes the life and creation of the writerFowles, the evaluation and the research to him at home and abroad; the second partintroduces The Magus’s writing process, revision and the relevant research about thenovel at home and abroad.The text is divided into three chapters. The first chapter discusses therelationship of the traditional British Bildungsroman and The Magus, by tracing backto the origin of the western Bildungsroman, and scanning its development situation.Then by choosing three typical British Bildungsromans to analyse, we can summarizethe characteristics of the traditional British Bildungsroman, which can be summarizedinto six simple phrases: realism, traveling plot, positive results, autobiographical color,guider, and the introspective trait. Although the Magus has a lot of inheritance to thetraditional British Bildungsroman, it also has more new ideological contents andcreative characteristics, which make the Magus become a new type ofBildungsroman. The following two chapters as the main body of the paper willdiscuss these new places.The second chapter discusses the Magus’s ideological contents which aredifferent from traditional British Bildungsroman. This is mainly manifested in themodern ideology——Self-personality, Freedom and Mysticism, contemporarymultiple education thoughts. Self-personality in the novel is mainly about the heroNicolas’ development history from the self fissile binary state to the stage of ego identity; Freedom and Mysticism are mainly telling young people the truth thatpeople only can obtain relative freedom which must rely on mystery existence;Contemporary multiple education thoughts are mainly conveyed by characterConchis for Nicholas’ story education, art education and psychological experimentaleducation, these education modes reflect on contemporary existential educationthought, modern humanism education thought and radicalism education thoughtand others.The third chapter discusses the Magus’s creative characteristics which aredifferent from traditional British Bildungsroman. The paper focus on three aspects:metafiction element, intertextual techniques, open ending. Metafiction elementmainly reveals by meta-narrative; intertextual techniques in the Magus include theways of Quotation, Implication, Parodie, and Pastiche; Open ending implies that thegrowth in the Magus is a kind of endless growth. These creative skills revealedcertain experimental, thus they make the Magus become a new type ofBildungsroman.The epilogue summarizes the above, and points out the relationship betweenFowles’ realism creative view and Bildungsroman creation, and puts forward thesignificances of this novel’s research from the perspective of Bildungsroman.