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The present article aims to analyze Richard Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 (1977) in the light of the genre of Metaphysical Detective Story. As a postmodern genre, Metaphysical Detective Story alters the customary features of traditional detective stories in order to go beyond simple murder mysteries and become a literary phenomenon which examines the questions of being. The central questions of the article are: what makes Richard Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon a metaphysical detective story? What are the functions and implications of metaphysical elements in the novel? To answer these questions, first the characteristic features of metaphysical detective stories are introduced and then they are contextualized in the novel. Focusing on such concepts as ‘parodic detective,’ ‘dreams,’ and ‘circular narrative,’ the present research examines how the novel subverts the standard tropes of hard-boiled detective stories and becomes a philosophical novel which portrays a bleak world and a failed hero. The article shows that as a postmodern novel, Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon deals with life in the postmodern era and explores the questions of being and knowing in the contemporary world instead of becoming another whodunit mystery.

The present article aims to analyze the notion of metatheatricality in Peter Shaffer’s Equus and to investigate the functions of such metatheatrical notions as self-reflexivity and fictionality in the overall structure and theme of the play. The central questions of this survey include: In what ways are typical metatheatrical techniques employed in Peter Shaffer’s Equus, and what are the structural and thematic functions of these elements? The present dramaturgical study first reviews the basic tenets of the concept of metatheatre as a postmodern genre in the theatre and then contextualizes them in the structural fabric of the play, focusing on two important metatheatrical elements, namely, play within a play and breaking the fourth wall. The present research shows that there are inner plays in the narrative structure of Equus, which are aligned with the characteristic features of metatheatricality as delineated by Richard Hornby in Drama, Metadrama, and Perception (1986). These plays within a play, which belong to the so-called “the inset type,” construct two sharply distinguishable structural layers. As metatheatrical plays within a play, they self-reflexively call attention to the fictional nature of the play as well as to the possibilities of narrative diversity. Equus breaks the fourth wall of the realistic drama when its lead character directly addresses the spectators, thereby getting them physically and mentally involved in the action. The spectators, as a result, step into the fictional world of the play and start to interact with the characters as the characters start to interact with them. Judgment and interpretation become reciprocal as both the audience and the performers take part in the process of narration and meaning-creation.  

The purpose of the present article is to investigate Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs (1997) within a theoretical context set by Linda Hutcheon’s definition of parody. In Hutcheon’s view, parody is a repetition with critical distance. Hucheonian parody allows the adapted work to challenge and ironically transform the form and the content of the hypotext in order not to ridicule but to create. The central questions of this research are: How does Jack Maggs employ Hutcheonian parody within the broader postmodern narrative discourse to view its source text with a critical distance? And, how does Hutcheonian parody engage Jack Maggs in contemporary social debates? In order to answer these questions, the research applies various aspects of Hutcheonian parody to Carey’s novel. The present paper demonstrates that Carey’s Jack Maggs recontextualizes Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1860) in a new Australian setting. It also argues that the novel, which has mostly received positive responses and reactions from both literary critics and general readers, illustrates Carey’s parodic attempt to revisit one of the most renowned novels of the Victorian era. The present research contends that Jack Maggs is a critique of nineteenth-century realism and, more broadly speaking, of master narratives.

The present article aims to explore the notion of Existentialist essence in the major and minor characters of Albert Camus’s short story “The Guest.” It also takes it upon itself to investigate the different implications of the setting of the story. The central questions of this survey, therefore, are: which of the characters of the short story can be said to have developed a sort of personality we associate with Existentialism? What can be inferred from Camus’s choice of the setting? To answer the questions, this moral/philosophical study first reviews the basic tenets of Existentialism in a nutshell and then probes them as well as their functions in the characters and the setting of the narrative. The present research argues that the only person who fits into Camus’s conception of an Existentialist hero is Daru, even though The Arab, too, develops certain traits which are attuned with the Existentialist mindset. It is also revealed that in “The Guest,” there are significant allusions toThe Myth of Sisyphus, Inferno, Hell, Notes from Underground, “The Waste Land,” and Psalm 23, which create a gloomy setting and represent Daru as a modern Sisyphus. A possible implication is that Camus is effectively comparing the plateau/Algeria/the world to Hades/inferno/Hell and that he is identifying himself with Daru and the people living in the mid-twentieth century with the residents of Tartarus.