현대영미소설 : 존 바스의 『도깨비집에서 길을 잃다』에 나타난 서사의 공간성

This essay aims to uncover the spatial and formal qualities and thereby the aesthetic value of the postmodem narrative of John Barth``s Lost in the Funhouse. Barth``s Mobius strip, in particular, represents the ontologically relational scope of the narrative space beyond its interpretative and temporal dimension. The strip illustrates a materialized abd crafted object constructed by the reader as indicated in the first story, "Frame-Tale." The strip also blurs the boundary between inside and outside, or between fictitiousness and reality, so that it creates a hyperspace which replaces the reality. Further, once the strip is thrown into the world, it roams and drifts around so as to map out a certain connectivity with the potential readers. The exiled passage of the Mobius strip represents that of the reader in reading, that of the writer in writing, and even that of the errant words of the narrative. Finally, the strip consists of a void or emptiness at its center. The void bespeaks the form of the ontological narrative space, the form of absence and negativity, while just like Fredric Jameson``s Bonaventure hotel, the space represents ontologically "a total space" and "the perfect world" in and of itself. After all, Barth``s narrative space illuminates the aesthetics of negativity and perfectibility in terms of its form and relationality.