Speculative Cultural Constructs of the Human Condition in John Fowles’s Mantissa

Abstract

In Mantissa, Miles Green is deprived of his identity, and his Muse(s) attempt to help him re-forget it through different (sub)cultural impersonations. This privately coded novel presents the process, which results in what could be termed a culturally determined variant of the postmodern human condition. My paper discusses some aspects of the way in which John Fowles reformulates his interpretations of the postmodern human condition, while demonstrating the capacity of art in general and of the novel in particular to adjust its rhetoric, narrative and technical solutions to the expectations generated by this extremely complex and difficult task.