''Giles Goat-Boy'' (1966) is the fourth novel by American writer
John Barth
John Simmons Barth (; born May 27, 1930) is an American writer who is best known for his postmodern and metafictional fiction. His most highly regarded and influential works were published in the 1960s, and include ''The Sot-Weed Factor'', a sa ...
. It is a
metafictional
Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasises its own narrative structure in a way that continually reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and stor ...
comic novel in which the universe is portrayed as a university campus in an elaborate allegory of both the
hero's journey
In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.
Earlie ...
and the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. Its title character is a human boy raised as a goat, who comes to believe he is the Grand Tutor, the predicted
Messiah
In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; ,
; ,
; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of ''mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach'' ...
. The book was a surprise bestseller for the previously obscure Barth, and in the 1960s had a
cult status
A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...
. It marks Barth's leap into American
postmodern fabulism.
Overview
''Giles Goat-Boy'' is one of Barth's most complex novels, a multi-layered narrative about the spiritual development of George Giles, goat boy. The book also functions as an
allegory
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...
of the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. Speaking in 2001, John Barth described the novel this way:
''Giles Goat-Boy'' marks Barth's emergence as a metafictional writer. The metafiction manifests itself in the "Publisher's Disclaimer" and "Cover-Letter to the Editors and Publisher" which preface the book, and which each try to pass off the responsibility for authorship onto another: the editors implicate Barth, who claims the text was given to him by a mysterious Giles Stoker or Stoker Giles, who in turn claims it was written by the automatic computer WESCAC. In the disclaimer the "editors" present their opinions on whether or not to publish the book, with responses ranging from repugnance to revelation, and some disparaging both the novel and its presumed author. The "author," JB, having amended the book to an unknown extent, claims it has become accidentally mixed up with a manuscript of his own. The book is further appended with a "Post-Tape" and then a postscript, both potentially spurious, further undermining the authority of the author.
''Bookworm'' host
Michael Silverblatt
Michael Silverblatt (born August 6, 1952) is a literary critic and American broadcaster who hosted '' Bookworm'', a nationally syndicated radio program focusing on books and literature, from 1989 to 2022.
''Bookworm'' is broadcast by Los Angeles ...
argues that in the novel, “parody and burlesque and tragedy supersede themselves, transcend themselves.”
[ Much of the humor and many events in the book employ a number of potentially offensive representations of ]blacks
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in ...
, Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
and women, and historical events such as the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
are the subjects of absurdist humor. '' Life Magazine'' described ''Giles Goat-Boy'' as "a black comedy to offend everyone."
Plot
George Giles is a boy raised as a goat who rises in life to be Grand Tutor (spiritual leader or messiah) of New Tammany College (the United States, or the Earth, or the Universe).[Guido Sommavilla]
''Peripenzie Dell'epica Contemporanea''
p. 295 He strives for (and achieves) herohood, in accordance with the hero myth as theorized by Lord Raglan
Baron Raglan, of Raglan in the County of Monmouth, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 20 October 1852 for the military commander Lord FitzRoy Somerset, chiefly remembered as commander of the British troops ...
and Joseph Campbell. The novel abounds in mythological and Christian allegories, as well as in allusions to the Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, 1960s academia
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
, religion and spirituality. Rather than ''discovering'' his true identity, George ultimately ''chooses'' it, much like Ebeneezer Cooke does in Barth's previous novel, '' The Sotweed Factor''.
The principle behind the allegorical renaming of key roles in the novel as roman à clef
''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship be ...
is that the Earth (or the Universe) is a university. Thus, for example, the founder of a religion or great religious leader becomes a Grand Tutor (in German ''Grosslehrer''), and Barth renames specific leaders as well: Jesus Christ
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
becomes Enos Enoch (meaning in Hebrew "The man who walked with God" or "humanity when it walked with God"), Moses
Moses hbo, מֹשֶׁה, Mōše; also known as Moshe or Moshe Rabbeinu (Mishnaic Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, ); syr, ܡܘܫܐ, Mūše; ar, موسى, Mūsā; grc, Mωϋσῆς, Mōÿsēs () is considered the most important pro ...
becomes Moishe, Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...
becomes the original Sakhyan. As the founder of the maieutic method, Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
becomes Maios; Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
(whose Greek name ''Platon'' means "broad-shouldered") becomes Scapulas (from scapula, shoulder-blade); Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
, as the coiner of the term ''entelekheia'' (lit. "having an end within," usually translated "entelechy," or glossed as the actualization of a potentiality), becomes Entelechus. The heroes of epic poem
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
s tend to be named after the Greek for "son of": Odysseus
Odysseus ( ; grc-gre, Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, OdysseúsOdyseús, ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; lat, UlyssesUlixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. Odysse ...
becomes Laertides (son of Laertes), Aeneas
In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas (, ; from ) was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite (equivalent to the Roman Venus). His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy (both being grandsons ...
becomes Anchisides (son of Anchises), and so on. The subtitle ''The Revised New Syllabus'' means, in the novel's Universe=University allegory, a parodic
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...
rewriting
In mathematics, computer science, and logic, rewriting covers a wide range of methods of replacing subterms of a well-formed formula, formula with other terms. Such methods may be achieved by rewriting systems (also known as rewrite systems, rewr ...
of the New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
. Satan
Satan,, ; grc, ὁ σατανᾶς or , ; ar, شيطانالخَنَّاس , also known as Devil in Christianity, the Devil, and sometimes also called Lucifer in Christianity, is an non-physical entity, entity in the Abrahamic religions ...
is the Dean o' Flunks, and lives in the Nether Campus (hell); John the Baptist
John the Baptist or , , or , ;Wetterau, Bruce. ''World history''. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1994. syc, ܝܘܿܚܲܢܵܢ ܡܲܥܡܕ݂ܵܢܵܐ, Yoḥanān Maʿmḏānā; he, יוחנן המטביל, Yohanān HaMatbil; la, Ioannes Bapti ...
is John the Bursar; the Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount (anglicized from the Matthean Vulgate Latin section title: ) is a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth found in the Gospel of Matthew (chapters 5, 6, and 7). that emphasizes his moral teachings. It is ...
becomes the Seminar-on-the-Hill; the Last Judgment
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Reckoning, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, Doomsday, Day of Resurrection or The Day of the Lord (; ar, یوم القيامة, translit=Yawm al-Qiyāmah or ar, یوم الدین, translit=Yawm ad-Dīn, ...
becomes the Final Examination. Among the parodic variations, a computer replaces the Holy Spirit
In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is the divine force, quality, and influence of God over the Universe or over his creatures. In Nicene Christianity, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is the third person of the Trinity. In Islam, the Holy Spirit acts as ...
, and an artificial insemination
Artificial insemination is the deliberate introduction of sperm into a female's cervix or uterine cavity for the purpose of achieving a pregnancy through in vivo fertilization by means other than sexual intercourse. It is a fertility treatment ...
the Immaculate Conception
The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception.
It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, meaning that it is held to be a divinely revealed truth w ...
.
As claimed in the opening prefaces, the text is "discovered" by the author. A hypertext
Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typi ...
encyclopedia also figures in the book, years before the invention of hypertext and three decades before the Web became part of society at large. The character Max Spielman is a parody of Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new sp ...
, whose insight "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the ovum, egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to t ...
" is rephrased as "ontogeny recapitulates cosmogeny
Cosmogony is any model concerning the origin of the cosmos or the universe.
Overview
Scientific theories
In astronomy, cosmogony refers to the study of the origin of particular astrophysical objects or systems, and is most commonly used i ...
" and " proctoscopy repeats hagiography
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies migh ...
". The "riddle of the universe
The term "world riddle" or "world-riddle" has been associated, for over 100 years, with Friedrich Nietzsche (who mentioned ''Welträthsel'' in several of his writings)
and with the biologist- philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who, as a professor of zo ...
" is rephrased as "the riddle of the sphincters". The novel also contains a forty-page parody in small type of the full text of ''Oedipus Rex
''Oedipus Rex'', also known by its Greek title, ''Oedipus Tyrannus'' ( grc, Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, ), or ''Oedipus the King'', is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed around 429 BC. Originally, to the ancient Gr ...
'' called ''Taliped Decanus''. The digressive play-within-a-book is grossly disproportionate to the length of the book, parodying both Sophocles
Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or co ...
and Freud.
Background
According to Barth, a reviewer of ''The Sot-Weed Factor'' saw in that book the pattern of the "Wandering Hero Myth", as described by Lord Raglan
Baron Raglan, of Raglan in the County of Monmouth, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 20 October 1852 for the military commander Lord FitzRoy Somerset, chiefly remembered as commander of the British troops ...
in ''The Hero'' (1936). This observation impelled Barth to begin research into comparative mythology and anthropology, which included reading Otto Rank
Otto Rank (; ; né Rosenfeld; 22 April 1884 – 31 October 1939) was an Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and philosopher. Born in Vienna, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, ...
's ''Myth of the Birth of the Ritual Hero'' (1909; 1914) and Joseph Campbell's ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces
''The Hero with a Thousand Faces'' (first published in 1949) is a work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell, in which the author discusses his theory of the mythological structure of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world myt ...
'' (1949). This led to Barth's invocation and playful deconstruction of the idea of the Ur-Myth in ''Giles Goat-Boy''. Barth would delve further into the Hero in his essay "Mystery and Tragedy", and in his novels ''LETTERS
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
'' (1979) and ''Once Upon a Time
"Once upon a time" is a stock phrase used to introduce a narrative of past events, typically in fairy tales and folk tales. It has been used in some form since at least 1380 (according to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'') in storytelling in t ...
'' (1995).
In the 1987 preface to the novel Barth declared that his first three novels formed a "loose trilogy of novels", after completing which he felt ready to move into new territory. He called ''Giles Goat-Boy'' the first of his Fabulist
Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral ...
novels, in contrast to the 1950s-style black comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discus ...
displayed in the earlier novels. He declared in a 1965 essay, "Muse, Spare Me", that he desired to be spared from social-historical responsibility in order to focus on aesthetic concerns. ''The Sot-Weed Factor'' was released in paperback the year before ''Giles Goat-Boy'', and increased interest in his work shortly before ''Giles Goat-Boy'' was released.
''Giles Goat-Boy'' was released the same year as a number of landmark works in the early history of postmodern American literature, most notably Pynchon's ''The Crying of Lot 49
''The Crying of Lot 49'' is a 1966 novel by American author Thomas Pynchon. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-ol ...
''. Brian McHale
Brian G. McHale is a US academic and literary theorist who writes on a range of fiction and poetics, mainly relating to postmodernism and narrative theory. He is currently Distinguished Humanities Professor of English at Ohio State University. His ...
has seen 1966 as being a year in which the new postmodern aesthetic had definitively arrived, a year in which metafiction, poststructuralism and other concepts strongly related to postmodernism made their mark in the US.
Barth, himself a university professor, also set ''The End of the Road
''The End of the Road'' is the second novel by American writer John Barth, published first in 1958, and then in a revised edition in 1967. The irony-laden black comedy's protagonist Jacob Horner suffers from a Existential nihilism, nihilistic p ...
'' on a university campus.
Reception
''Giles Goat-Boy'' was on ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' bestseller list in 1966 for 12 weeks, but was coldly received in England.
The novel was initially reviewed enthusiastically, and "inspired critical awe and cultish popular devotion." However, by 1984, Robert Alter referred to the book as "reced nginto the detritus of failed experiments in American fiction", calling it "little more than an inflated translation game ... so brittle a cleverness that it constantly reveals the tediousness of the novel's informing conception." While it enjoyed a cult status in the 1960s, the novel has since become one of Barth's least-read works. John Gardner called the book a morally "empty but well-made husk." Gore Vidal
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and ...
called it "a very bad prose-work", dismissing it as one of a number of overly academic "teachers' novel "
In a 1967 article, science fiction author Judith Merril
Judith Josephine Grossman (January 21, 1923 – September 12, 1997), who took the pen-name Judith Merril around 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist, and one of the first women to be wid ...
praised the novel for its sophistication in handling sexual material. ''Giles Goat-Boy'' is considered by many to be Barth's best work.
Barth's own statements on the primacy of aesthetics in his writing have tended to obscure the book's otherwise obvious politics, particularly the 1960s Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
allegory. Robert Scholes
Robert E. Scholes (1929 – December 9, 2016) was an American literary critic and theorist. He is known for his ideas on fabulation and metafiction.
Education and career
Robert Scholes was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1929. After taking hi ...
was among the early critics who dismissed the elaborate allegory as irrelevant, and critics since then have emphasized the role of the hero and the quest in the book's construction. In the 1980s, Barth revisited his 1960s works and came to acknowledge their historical context, including a new preface to the 1987 edition of ''Giles Goat-Boy''.
Legacy
In 1967, after the success of ''Giles Goat-Boy'', Barth was able to release a revised one-volume edition of his first two novels (''The Floating Opera
''The Floating Opera'' is a novel by American writer John Barth, first published in 1956 and significantly revised in 1967. Barth's first published work, the existentialist and nihilist story is a first-person account of a day when protagonist ...
'' and ''The End of the Road
''The End of the Road'' is the second novel by American writer John Barth, published first in 1958, and then in a revised edition in 1967. The irony-laden black comedy's protagonist Jacob Horner suffers from a Existential nihilism, nihilistic p ...
'') that restore the books' original, darker endings.
Barth has come to see ''Giles Goat-Boy'' as "the first American postmodernist novel," an assertion picked up by many of his critics and biographers, but not universally accepted. The novel was the central exhibit of Robert Scholes
Robert E. Scholes (1929 – December 9, 2016) was an American literary critic and theorist. He is known for his ideas on fabulation and metafiction.
Education and career
Robert Scholes was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1929. After taking hi ...
' ''The Fabulators'' (1967), a study of a tendency in contemporary writers to eschew realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
*Classical Realism
*Literary realism, a move ...
in fiction.
See also
* 1966 in literature
* American literature
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition thus is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also inc ...
References
Works cited
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Further reading
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* Joseph Campbell, ''The Hero With a Thousand Faces
''The Hero with a Thousand Faces'' (first published in 1949) is a work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell, in which the author discusses his theory of the mythological structure of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world myt ...
''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. (First published in 1949.)
*James L. McDonald, "Barth's Syllabus: The Frame of ''Giles Goat-Boy''. ''Critique'' 13.3 (1972): 5–10.
*Peter Mercer,
The Rhetoric of "Giles Goat-Boy"
' ''Novel: A Forum on Fiction'' 4.2 (Winter: 1971): 147–158
*David Morrell
David Morrell (born April 24, 1943) is a Canadian-American novelist whose debut 1972 novel ''First Blood'', later adapted as the 1982 film of the same name, went on to spawn the successful ''Rambo'' franchise starring Sylvester Stallone. He h ...
, ''John Barth: An Introduction''. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976.
*Lord Raglan
Baron Raglan, of Raglan in the County of Monmouth, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 20 October 1852 for the military commander Lord FitzRoy Somerset, chiefly remembered as commander of the British troops ...
, ''The Hero: A Study in Tradition''. London: Oxford University Press, 1937.
* Douglas Robinson, ''John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy: A Study''. Jyväskylä (Finland): University of Jyväskylä Press, 1980.
* Robert E. Scholes, ''The Fabulators'' (final chapter). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
*Jac Tharpe, ''John Barth: The Comic Sublimity of Paradox''. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974.
*John Tilton, "''Giles Goat-Boy'': An Interpretation." ''Bucknell Review'' 18 (Spring 1970): 93–119.
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