1945-present: Postmodern Following World War II (1939-1945), the Postmodern

Period Period of British Literature developed. Postmodernism

blends literary genres and styles and attempts to break
free of modernist forms.

While the British literary scene at the turn of the new

millenium is crowded and varied, the authors still fall
into the categories of modernism and postmodernism.
However, with the passage of time the Modern era may
be reorganized and expanded.

The Magus is the first novel that John Fowles actually penned, although it would only be published after two
subsequent efforts were completed. Fowles is perhaps most famous for later writing The French Lieutenant’s
Woman. Anyone who has read that groundbreaking novel or even seen the acclaimed film adapted from it is
familiar with the fact that Fowles artistic signature is playing around with reader expectation. Fowles was a
leading light in the world of postmodern fiction before that term lapsed into pop culture meaninglessness
capable of application to pert near anything. And The Magus makes The French Lieutenant’s Woman look
like a completely straightforward example of Modernism by comparison.

The Magus is purposely and notoriously unclear as far as reaching the kind of ending that most people
would seem—judging by standards codified through a century of Hollywood films—to prefer. As a result, the
ending naturally feels incomplete, but in literary terms the very lack of determinacy is often successfully
utilized for the purpose of creating a coherence synonymous with ambiguity. In turn, a lesser known
synonym for ambiguity, but one endowed with a more facilitative estimation as a device for the creation of a
work genuinely deserving of being designated as postmodern literature is plurisignation. Plurisignation is
the preferred alternative term called into action for the purpose of expanding on the concept of
ambiguity.

The term was coined by author Philip Wainwright in his study of the language of symbolism, The Burning
Fountain. Wainwright rejected the constriction of the inherent “either/or” meaning connotatively contained
with literature seeking to create layers of possibilities through a heightened demonstration of ambiguousness
meaning. His aim expanding upon the imprecision of the mysterious quality of ambiguity to lend it a
“both/and” concept under the term plurisignation. Perhaps even more to the point is Wainwright also intended
the quality of plurisignation within a text to employ ambiguity as an essential part of its overall meaning. Such
an example of the type of ambiguous writing that employs the particular technique of plurisignation is John
Fowles’ debut effort, The Magus.

The novel is short on plot, long on character and even longer on the ambiguous nature between what is
real and what is unreal. Or, perhaps more appropriately, less real. Or, maybe even more appropriately, less
unreal. At the heart of the narrative motion that carries readers of The Magus to appointment with
disappointment if they are of a mind that needs to have some sort of definite ending spelled out for them by
the author are what the author refers to as “godgames.” These amusement constructed upon the foundation of
blurring the line between what is reality and what is merely artifice eventually place the reader front and
center in the extricating some sort of unambiguous meaning from the wealth of plurisignatious possibilities
that author has provided for them.
Or, put in a less plurisignatious manner, the ending of The Magus is left entirely until to reader. And there
is no ambiguity about that, as the many letters addressed to Fowles from readers pleading for a definitive
qualification of the outcome of the novel that was intended by the author. Confirmation that The Magus
fulfills Wainwright directive that plurisignation requires the ambiguity to be essential to the meaning of the
story, when Fowles took upon himself the task of responding to such pleas, his answer would depend on how
he felt at the moment and could be an outcome utterly oppositional to his most immediately previous response
to a reader.

This thematically complex novel is equal parts psychological study and mystery thriller, using the narrative
structure of the latter as a framework for the former. It tells the story of a self-centered young Briton,
Nicholas Urfe, who, over the course of a magical summer in Greece, discovers sometimes frightening truths
about himself and about the nature of life. Vivid imagery, dense language, and intriguingly layered
characterizations thread, collide and intertwine throughout the narrative until the reader, like Nicholas, is
unsure of what's true and what's fabricated by the characters. Only on the novel's very last page are
protagonist and reader alike assured that the carefully woven mystery is over ... and the free-flowing mystery
of life is now ready to begin.

The Magus is told from the point of view of Nicholas Urfe, who is bored with life. Having attended Oxford
and taught for a year at a public school, he decides to take a position as the English teacher at the Lord Bryon
School in Greece, on the island of Phraxos. Nicholas looks up a former teacher there, and is warned to
"Beware of the waiting-room," without explanation. Nicholas is not deterred, but during the last few weeks
before he leaves, he meets Alison Kelly, an Australian girl who is about to begin training as an airline
stewardess. They are both sophisticated about sex and somewhat cynical, but each experiences some regret as
they go their separate ways.

During his first six months on Phraxos, Nicholas finds the school claustrophobic but the island beautiful. He
realizes that he cannot write good poetry and that he is having difficulty forgetting Alison. In a funk, he visits
a brothel in Athens and contracts a venereal disease. He seriously contemplates suicide. The first of the
novel's three parts ends at this point.

The mysteries begin as Nicholas goes swimming and someone leaves a book of poems, evidently meant for
him to find. As he looks in the woods nearby, he finds a gate to a villa with a nearby sign Salle D'Attente,
French for "waiting room." One of his colleagues at the school explains that the villa is owned by a rich
recluse named Maurice Conchis. Nicholas decides to look him up and finds, inexplicably, that he is expected.
After some conversation, as Nicholas is leaving, he finds an old-fashioned glove on the path and surmises that
someone has been watching them.

Invited back for the next weekend, Nicholas is astonished by Conchis' collection of art and by his claim to be
psychic. After dinner, Conchis tells Nicholas about an episode in his boyhood when he was fifteen and met a
fourteen-year-old girl named Lily Montgomery, whose image haunted him afterward. They were both
musically inclined and fell in love, but in 1914, she led him to feel that he ought to volunteer for the army.
Conchis explains that he deserted at the battle of Neuve Chapelle, and offers Nicholas a chance to gamble
with his own life by rolling a die and promising that he will take a cyanide pill if the die comes up six. It does,
but Nicholas refuses to take the pill; Conchis seems to approve his decision, and reveals that the die was
loaded against the roller--as was World War I against the soldiers. That night, as Nicholas is going to sleep, he
hears voices singing a war song and smells a foul stench.

The next day Conchis encourages Nicholas to read a pamphlet by Robert Foulkes, written as he was waiting
to be hanged in 1677. Nicholas takes it with him on a walk, falls asleep, and awakes to see a man in 17th-
century dress staring at him from across a ravine. The man disappears before Nicholas can reach him.

At dinner that night, Conchis tells of his wartime pretense to be on leave so that he could return to England to
visit Lily. As Nicholas retires, he hears a harpsichord accompanied by a recorder, and investigates, to find
Conchis and a beautiful girl dressed in Edwardian clothes, but he declines to interrupt them.

The next weekend "Lily" joins them after dinner and speaks in the language of the early 1900s. Their
conversation is interrupted when a horn sounds, a spotlight illuminates a nymph who runs by, pursued by a
satyr, and another woman seems to shoot the satyr with an arrow. Nicholas is bewildered but decides that
Conchis must be re-creating masques for his own amusement. Lily refuses to explain, and Conchis talks in
parables. He describes an attempt to found a Society for Reason after the war, and he tells the story of a rich
collector whose mansion is burned by a resentful servant. Nicholas begins to fall in love with Lily, who
professes to be as mystified by what Conchis may be up to as Nicholas is. Conchis explains that she is a
schizophrenic whom he indulges by letting her manipulate men in the controlled environment at Bourani, but
that Nicholas must not believe what she tells him. For the weekend's culminating experience, Conchis
hypnotizes Nicholas, who experiences the separateness of himself from everything else. Nicholas leaves eager
to return for more adventures.
Alison has invited Nicholas to Athens the next weekend. Nicholas finds the villa closed up, so he meets her
and falsely tells her that he is suffering from syphilis. They have an enjoyable weekend climbing in the
mountains, at the end of which, back in Athens, Nicholas confesses his lie and tells her about Bourani and
Lily. Alison is hurt, and gives him an ultimatum: She will quit her job and join him on Phraxos, or she will
leave him. When Nicholas hesitates, a violent argument ensues, and she refuses to let him back in their hotel
room.

When Nicholas returns to the villa, Conchis drops the pretense that Lily is a schizophrenic and tells him that
she and her twin sister are actresses named Julie and June, whom Conchis has hired for a theatrical
experiment. The first evening, Conchis tells Nicholas the story of Henrik Nygaard, a blind madman who
believes that he talks with God. Afterward, Nicholas goes to a passionate rendezvous with Julie in the woods,
where he is shocked to discover that Julie has sent her twin sister instead. June explains that they feel like
prisoners, always watched by Conchis' black valet, Joe, repeatedly told to learn lines and to prepare for
improvisations, but never told what it all means. The next day the twins tell Nicholas their backgrounds and
show him documents to support their statements. After a day of being shadowed by Joe, even while they are
inside an empty chapel, the twins leave with Conchis on his yacht, vowing to insist that he begin to be
forthright with them all.

The next Wednesday the yacht returns, and Julie meets Nicholas at night to assure him that there will be no
more pretense of schizophrenia; however, Nicholas is to join the twins in the improvisation the next weekend,
after which all will be explained. Julie again avoids sex with Nicholas, pleading her menstrual period. On his
way back to school in the dark, Nicholas is stopped by a patrol of soldiers in Nazi uniforms, who proceed to
beat up a captured partisan. To Nicholas's dismay, he receives a letter on Friday that he will not be welcome,
after all, at the villa that weekend.

Nicholas receives two letters the next Thursday, one from Julie indicating that Conchis has told her that
Nicholas was sick and the other from Alison's roommate telling Nicholas that Alison has committed suicide.
He does not reveal this to Conchis the next weekend, but demands to know the truth. Conchis explains that he
is experimenting with a new form of theater, without audience, in which everyone is an actor.

Conchis continues the supposed story of his life with the narrative of the German occupation, when he served
as mayor of Phraxos. A crucial event, interpreted differently by different characters in the novel, occurred
after the killing of three Austrian soldiers by guerrillas. Conchis was told that the lives of eighty villagers
about to be executed in reprisal would be spared if he would club the guerrilla leader to death; he refused, and
took his place with the hostages, but managed to survive the mass execution.

Conchis then explains that Julie is his mistress and that they are all about to leave. When Nicholas tries to
confront Julie, she disappears, playfully demonstrating one of their hiding places in an old bunker. Inside, she
denies what Conchis has said, but as she climbs out of the bunker, she is grabbed and Nicholas locked in.
When he gets out, he finds the villa shut up and a skull and a doll hanging from a nearby tree. Nicholas does
not know what to think and returns to school.

Several nights later, June appears at the school in distress, concerned about Julie. She says that they have lied
to Nicholas and falsified documents about who they are. Nicholas explains that their games have cost the life
of Alison. She apologizes, and explains that Conchis is really a psychiatrist doing research and that Julie is at
his house in the village, to which June offers to take Nicholas. When he arrives, Nicholas and Julie make
passionate love, after which she tells him that Julie is not really her name, and walks out. Three men walk in
and restrain Nicholas as they administer an injection that makes him lose consciousness.

Some days later, Nicholas revives, is dressed in ritual garb, and is taken to a chamber decorated with symbols,
where he is seated on a throne facing 12 figures in bizarre costumes. As they unmask, they are introduced as
psychiatrists, including the former Lily as Dr. Vanessa Maxwell, who reads a clinical diagnosis of Nicholas's
psychological problems. She is then stripped to the waist and tied to a flogging frame, as Nicholas is handed a
cat-o'-nine-tails and invited to judge her--and the others--by choosing to flay her or not. He declines. Then
Nicholas is tied to the frame, to watch Lily and Joe make tender love in front of him. Afterward, he is again
made unconscious.

Nicholas awakens on the mainland, alone. He returns to the school and gets himself fired. He goes back to the
villa and searches for clues. Although he finds a typescript of a story about how a prince learns to become a
magician by accepting that life is full of illusion, Nicholas goes on looking for expla- nations. The second part
of the book ends with his discovery that Alison is still alive, her supposed suicide evidently part of the
charade.

In the last part, Nicholas continues his research. Nicholas finds no record of Conchis' supposed credentials in
psychology. He interviews one of his predecessors at the Lord Byron School, now living as a monk in Italy,
but the monk is not interested in helping Nicholas. He finally succeeds in locating a house in which a
Montgomery lived during World War I and the inhabitant directs him to one of the Montgomery daughters, a
Mrs. Lily de Seitas. At first, she toys with Nicholas, but when he finds out that she has twin daughters of her
own, she admits that she is a friend of Conchis--and of Alison. Nicholas is angry, partly over her refusal to tell
him where Alison is, but he gradually overcomes his resentment and they meet again.

Nicholas begins to appreciate what has happened, and even declines to discuss it with his immediate
predecessor at the Lord Byron School. Finally, Alison appears when he least expects her, and they have a
confrontation in Regent's Park, where he at first imagines that they are being watched from Cumberland
Terrace. Nicholas issues her an ultimatum--"them or me." She rejects the ultimatum, and Nicholas walks away
from her. When she follows him, he slaps her without understanding why. Then he realizes that they are
unobserved and asks forgiveness. The novel ends at that point, with their future relationship uncertain.
 The structure of The Magus is characterized by self-consciousness, complexity, mystery and
fictional games. The most striking feature of the novel’s complexity is the sheer proliferation of texts: there
are numerous stories that the reader is invited to examine through the act of reading, classical mythology,
biology, Marxist ideas on society, theories of drama and role-playing, fiction-making, psychology,
philosophy.
Another sign is that there are three narrators:
 Nicholas, who narrates the entire novel in the first-person narrative form;
  Conchis, who is inscribed in the text and whose narrative is reported within quotation marks;
finally, there is
 an omniscient narrator who intervenes very briefly in the last chapter of the novel in order to
guide Nicholas, as well as the reader, out of the novel’s maze.
Moreover, The Magus also integrates two distinct perspectives,one represented by Nicholas, the
other by Maurice Conchis, the magus of the title, and his accomplices in the godgame.
 Nicholas interprets his experiences through a stereotypically masculine, conventional
lens, while
 Conchis and his accomplices, operate through an unconventional and interpersonal
perspective that Conchis himself identifies with women’s ways of knowing and being.
The ultimate success of The Magus depends upon various textual maneuvers that are deployed
throughout and practiced by the narrators in order to create an existential freedom for the characters.
1. The first stage of these textual maneuvers is related to the general structure of the
novel, that is, the ways in which the narrators tell their stories.
2. The second involves the construction of a setting as a form of an “alternative
world” whose fictionality is constantly paralleled by other fictional texts that are
deployed metaphorically in the novel.
3. The third and perhaps the most important reflector of the novel’s structure is the
godgame, which makes up the psychodrama and portrays a hierarchy predicated
upon gender difference and resultant politics of seduction.
The first passage of the novel illustrates two major characteristics of the novel’s structure.
 Firstly, it focuses on the main character-narrator as an individual who is involved in an
active process of constructing his own life.
 Secondly, and most important, we learn that Nicholas wants to reconstruct his own past
experience because he is disillusioned by the norms of his middle-class background and
his Victorian parentage. He rejects the present situation and seeks a dramatic change in his
character, he is determined to rewrite and rearrange his life. And when he says he is not the
person he wants to be, he exhibits his first desire to start a quest to discover who he is and what
kind of person he is meant to be.
The main feature of the novel is its tripartite structure.
  The first part is narrated entirely by Nicholas, and consists of the first nine chapters, starting in
London where he meets Alison, and finishing in the Greek island where he takes a teaching
job.
 The second part constitutes the major portion of the novel and begins in chapter 10 and ends
with chapter 67. This section is also narrated by Nicholas, but inscribed within this narrative is
the figure of Conchis, the second narrator of the various stories that deal with his own life and
the history of Europe under the German occupation.
 The third and final section of the novel consists of chapters 68-78, where Nicholas returns to
London. The last chapter of the novel introduces the third type of narration: the omniscient
narrative. Here, an unidentified narrator speaks directly to the reader about the hero, who
should be left alone to find his own way out of the novel’s maze.
1. The tripartite structure and thematic design of the novel are coherently linked through a circular
design. At the structural level, the novel begins and ends in London. On the thematic level, Nicholas’ entire
life and his quest for freedom seem to be moving in an enclosed circle (Salami, 75). The novel begins with
Nicholas trying to challenge himself, to build himself up, and to secure his relationship with Alison. At the
end of the novel we see him nearly in the same position, still confused about what has happened to him, and
uncertain about his future. The only change that occurs between the beginning and the end of the novel is
Nicholas’ attitude towards Alison. At the beginning she is nothing but an object in his fantasies, but at the
end she becomes a free woman and he is prepared to accept her.
2. The second involves the construction of a setting as a form of an “alternative world” whose
fictionality is constantly paralleled by other fictional texts that are deployed metaphorically in the
novel.
The Magus explicitly constructs an alternative world both as an escape from reality and as a
metaphor for the process of fictionality, the implications being that an escape from reality is a
fictionalization, a way of constructing a different account of reality. For Nicholas, reality becomes a
narrative, a fictional construct, and narrative itself controls his reality, his life. Indeed, it is constantly
emphasized in the novel that Bourani is an art world, a metaphor. Conchis frequently stresses that the masque
is only a metaphor. Nicholas discovers the various metaphorical patterns that link Conchis’ texts to the
experiences he himself is undergoing. This is how Conchis’ fictional texts control and mould Nicholas’
subjectivity. Thus, the people in this world live in a fictional world and only act as if they were in a real
world. The Magus is about Nicholas’ attempts to distinguish between the two worlds, to learn what
makes a world fictional. He narrativizes his own experience in order to authenticate his reality, to identify
his own position in the world (Salami, 74).
3. The third and perhaps the most important reflector of the novel’s structure is the godgame, which
makes up the psychodrama and portrays a hierarchy predicated upon gender difference and resultant politics
of seduction. Nicholas is enchanted by Conchis’ game and he wants to be a part of it. Towards the end of
the novel, his greatest resentment towards Maurice is “Not that he had done what he did, but that he had
stopped doing it”. Thus, he becomes deeply involved in the games, in the excitement of detecting the
novel’s mysteries. But the terrible thing for him is that when the game ends, he is left alone, with
nothing, losing his job, Lily, and any hope of finding the origins and meanings of various stories he
hears during the godgame, particularly those connected to Alison’s death.
The process of constructing women as subjects overpowered by men is clearly seen throughout
the novel. The first scene that embodies this sex/power representation is concretized through Nicholas’ first
reaction to his contact with Alison. This is further illustrated by the parallel Conchis draws between male
power and its exploitation of femininity by the destructive power of war. He expresses his contempt for a
world that is destroyed by war, the machine that is controlled and dominated by men. He says 413.
The image of Nicholas as being turned from victimizer into victim is embodied by the scene of the
trial. He reacts violently against the humiliation of his own male power by Julie, the female figure who strips
him of his own masculinity. He considers himself superior to her, but here she is the one who can overpower
him. According to him, in his male world, woman is constructed as an object, a commodity possessed by
man; the godgame thus alters the limitations of Nicholas’ knowledge of his own self in relation to other
human beings. Through physical torture and psychological pressure, he begins to understand himself and to
understand others. However, he fails to abandon his male power, and this can be seen in his reconstruction of
Alison as an ideal, trustworthy woman, the opposite of Lily. This is further dramatized in the scene after he
finds out her suicide was a lie. What draws him to Alison is precisely the fact that she cannot be classified, or
put into a box and labeled. She is unnamable.