A Menippean Marvel: John Fowles’s Mantissa
A Menippean Marvel: John Fowles’s Mantissa

Summary/Abstract: Menippean satire, emerging in the 3rd century BCE, is a fluid, digressive genre that defies conventional definitions. Its adaptability across historical periods makes each example unique, often marked by cynicism, parody, and carnivalization. Menippean works question absolute truths through irony, challenging cultural, philosophical, and literary norms without providing alternative solutions. John Fowles's Mantissa (1982) exemplifies Menippean satire, exploring themes of metafiction, creative process, and literary theory. Through dialogues between author Miles Green and his characters, the novel blurs boundaries between reality and imagination. John Fowles' Mantissa challenges conventional fiction-writing through intertextuality, dialogy, and metafiction questioning the nature of existence, the boundaries between fiction and reality, and societal norms. The novel, through its playful, multilayered narrative, breaks binaries like sanity versus madness while satirizing traditional literary authority and high art conventions.

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