John Fowles

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John Robert Fowles (born March 31, 1926 in Leigh-on-Sea near London; †  November 5, 2005 in Lyme Regis ) was an English narrator, poet and essayist who was one of the first postmodern authors to write the literature of the last third of the 20th century . Century has significantly influenced.

biography

The first four decades

Fowles was the son of the merchant Robert Fowles and his wife Gladys. His father fought in Flanders in World War I and was stationed in occupied Cologne for one year in 1919.

After the first years of school, John Fowles is a boarding school student in Bedford , north of London . He soon becomes top of his class, also an excellent athlete, member of the rugby team and captain of the school's cricket team. 1945-1947 he does his military service not far from the Dartmoor .

From 1947 to 1950 Fowles studied French literature at Oxford University (including German for a year). Since then he sees himself as an existentialist in the sense of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus . He got his first position as a lecturer in 1950 at the University of Poitiers in France, where he taught English literature. In 1951 he went on a tent trip with friends through Tyrol , German-speaking Switzerland , Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg . In 1952 he became an English teacher in a boarding school on the Greek island of Spetses, which was influenced by the British school system . Fowles met his future wife Elizabeth there, whom he married in 1954. She brings her 10-year-old daughter Anna into the marriage. From 1954 to 1963 Fowles was a teacher at St. Godric's College in the upscale London borough of Hampstead , where he taught English as a foreign language to students from various, mostly overseas, countries.

The creative phase of the 1960s and 1970s

1963 Fowles' first published novel appears The Collector , German collector . In literary terms, the novel dissects a passion that has become pathological, but is largely still told conventionally. Due to the book's surprising success, Fowles is able to quit teaching and devote himself exclusively to writing. The novel was made into a film by William Wyler just two years later , German title Der Fänger .

In 1965 Fowles' actual first novel comes out, The Magus / dt. Der Magus , which is published in 1977 in a final, considerably expanded version. The novel draws on Fowles' experience as a boarding school teacher on the Greek island of Spetses (in the novel "Phraxos"). The young male protagonist Nicholas falls under the spell of an old and rich Greek cosmopolitan, the "Magus" Maurice Conchis, who, with initially opaque intentions and methods, completely messes up the life and love affairs of Nicholas. The novel, with its mystifications and surprising coincidences, is often cited as an important representative of literary constructivism . In the first ten years after its publication, the English original alone sold over 1 million copies, just like its predecessor. The film adaptation from 1968 naturally cannot do justice to this complexity of the book.

In 1969 the novel The French Lieutenant's Woman was published. The French lieutenant's mistress , considered one of the exemplary postmodern novels and Fowles' final breakthrough. A long-term bestseller in England and the USA, it also achieved high print runs in Germany. Against the background of a Victorian love story, he deals with the culture of that time, especially its images of science, sexuality and gender. Fowles breaks with the conventions of realistic narration by, for example, the "author" himself appearing as a character on the plot level and the novel ends in three variants. This novel was also made into a film and was extremely successful internationally.

In 1973, Fowles' only book of poetry came out during his lifetime, Poems . The volume Selected Poems (2012), which was only published after his death, mainly contains previously unpublished items. Fowles' adaptations of poetry from antiquity, by Jean de La Fontaine and by ancient Chinese and Japanese poets are a specialty .

In 1974 the band stories The Ebony Tower / dt. The Ebony Tower published. The five stories entwine around Fowles' translation of a chivalric romance by the first French writer Marie de France from Old French. The title story, The Ebony Tower , subtly and artistically describes the erotically charged encounter between four very different people, all of whom are professionally involved in painting, in a remote property in Brittany . This band, too, has long been on the bestseller lists on this side and the other side of the Atlantic. The title story was filmed in 1984.

In 1977 Fowles' most complex novel Daniel Martin (ditto) appears. The title character is an English screenwriter who sets out for Hollywood to work on a commissioned film , the system of which he closely observes and describes partly with biting irony, partly with forward-looking general media criticism .

In 1979 Fowles 'long essay The Tree was published, an autobiographical and philosophical consideration of trees, forests and nature in general, and of their influence on Fowles' writing process. In the wake of the growing importance of ecology, the essay has seen a new illustrated English edition (2016).

Fowles' last novels are Mantissa (ditto) from 1982 and A Maggott / dt. Die Grille from 1985.

The last few years

Fowles and his wife have lived near the seaside resort of Lyme Regis since 1965, on the former farm "Underhill Farm" right on the cliffs of Dorset ( Jurassic Coast ). When part of their property was demolished in 1968 after a storm, they moved into the listed building “Belmont” in the village itself. Fowles lived there until his death (2005). His wife Elizabeth died unexpectedly in 1990, and in 1998 he had Sarah Fowles b. Smith married. Sarah Fowles, daughter of Fowles' long-time neighbor, continued to work successfully for a large management consultancy firm at home and abroad for many years after the marriage.

Until a first stroke in 1988, Fowles held the position of (honorary) curator at the Lyme Regis Museum for ten years. His appreciation for the people in his area, who give the museum valuable documents of regional history, is expressed in the annual curator's reports. The museum made these reports available to the German John Fowles Society (DJFG), which was founded in 2015.

In the 1990s, Fowles was a repeated candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature . It has been the constant target of numerous literary scholars from around the world who are working on its development from conventional to more experimental narrative, from constructivism to deconstruction and from modernism to postmodernism . The Anglo-Saxon secondary literature on Fowles can therefore hardly be surveyed, but there are also some studies in German well into the 2010s.

Two years before Fowles' death, the first volume of his diaries comes out: The Journals - Volume 1 (1949-1965). A year before his death, the biography John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds by the US author Eileen Warburton, who was authorized by him, was published. On November 5, 2005, Fowles died in Lyme Regis at the age of 79 as a result of his serious illnesses. The second volume of the diaries followed posthumously in 2006: The Journals - Volume 2 (1965 - 1990).

The The New York Times Book Review named Fowles in 2008 as one of the 50 greatest English writer since 1945th

Works

  • 1963: The Collector ; Novel; revised edition 1979; German: The collector , 1964
  • 1964: The Aristos - A Self-Portrait in Ideas ; philosophical treatise based on Ludwig Wittgenstein; revised edition 1980
  • 1965: The Magus ; Novel; revised, last edition 1977; German: The Magus , 1969/1980
  • 1969: The French Lieutenant's Woman ; Novel; German: The mistress of the French lieutenant , 1970
  • 1973: Poems ; Poems
  • 1974: The Ebony Tower ; Stories; German: The Ebony Tower , 1975
  • 1974: Shipwreck ; Photo tape; German shipwreck , 1976
  • 1977: Daniel Martin ; Novel; German Daniel Martin , 1980
  • 1978: Islands ; Photo book ( Isles of Scilly )
  • 1979: The Tree ; Essay on nature, art and writing; illustrated new edition 2016
  • 1980: The Enigma of Stonehenge ; Photo tape
  • 1982: Mantissa ; Novel; German Mantissa , 1984
  • 1982: A short history of Lyme Regis
  • 1983: Lyme Regis: Three Town Walks ; revised edition 2003
  • 1985: A Maggot ; Novel; German The Cricket , 1987
  • 1985: country ; Photo book (English landscapes)
  • 1990: Lyme Regis Camera ; Photo book with historical photos by Lyme Regis
  • 1998: Wormholes - Essays and Occasional Writings
  • 2003: The Journals - Volume 1 ; Diaries 1949-1965
  • 2006: The Journals - Volume 2 ; Diaries 1965-1990
  • 2012: Selected Poems with numerous previously unpublished poems

Transcriptions from French

  • 1977: Claire de Duras, Ourika , novel from 1824
  • 1981: Molière, Dom Juan , acting, for the National Theater London
  • 1983: Alfred de Musset, Lorenzaccio , acting, for the National Theater London
  • 1984: Pierre Marivaux, Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard (The Lottery of Love / The game of love and chance) , comedy, for a workshop stage
  • 1985: Jean-Jacques Bernard, Martine , acting, for the National Theater London

Film adaptations

Radio plays

  • 2000: The collector (two-part SWR radio play production; takeover by WDR 2012, NDR 2013)
  • 2016: The Magus (three-part BBC radio play production)

literature

  • Eileen Warburton: John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds . Authorized biography, 2004.
  • Gerd Bayer, Guido Isekenmeier (Ed.): Recollecting John Fowles / Wiedererinnerungen an John Fowles . (1st yearbook of the German John Fowles Society (DJFG)), 2018.
  • Ann Spangenberg: Communicative Identity in Anglo-Saxon Postmodernism: John Fowles, Peter Ackroyd, AS Byatt , 2009.
  • Gerd Bayer: Greener, more mysterious processes of mind: Nature as a sealing principle in John Fowles , 2004.
  • Stefan Horlacher: Visuality and criticism of visuality in the work of John Fowles , 1998.
  • Tatjana Petzer; Order and chaos in John Fowles' "The Magus". A study on metafiction , 1996.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eileen Warburton, John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds , 2004.
  2. ^ German John Fowles Society .
  3. ↑ Eileen Warburton, John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds , 2004.
  4. ^ German John Fowles Society .
  5. ^ The Journals - Volume 1 (Diaries 1949-1965), 2003.
  6. ↑ Eileen Warburton, John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds , 2004.
  7. ^ The Journals - Volume 2 (Diaries 1965-1990), 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Fowles, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fowles, John Robert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British novelist
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Leigh-on-Sea near London
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 2005
Place of death Lyme Regis