The Eternal Rewriting: Language, Existentialism, and Play in Barth’s ‘Night-Sea Journey

Abstract

While the self-reflexivity of Barth’s short story collection Lost in the Funhouse is largely recognized, locating and defining its key focus has generated wider controversy, with most scholars adopting either a linguistic, metafictional stance, or a philosophical, existentialist one. Taking “Night-Sea Journey” as a case example, this paper aims to conflate both readings of Barth’s tales in order to reveal how both principles co-construct each other, for their concerns (as featured in the book) are not only correlative but inseverable. The study’s structure, mirroring that of the tale, will map the strategies employed to convey its existential preoccupations, as well as the violation of narrative expectations through which the text’s postmodern playfulness breaks in. In this way, the story’s concurrent deployment of materiality and transcendence, deep philosophy and light humor, canonical literature and satire, shall all be intertwined toward a comprehensive understanding of the collection’s major theme: the cyclical nature of human history, and the eternal rewriting of our stories.