A STUDY ON JOHN BARTH’S 'THE SOT-WEED FACTOR' AS A PARODY (Pages 44-52) by R. Murugesan* and Dr. V. Gnanaprakasam** in THE INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH SPECIALIST / ISSN: 2350-1499 (Online); 2350-0751 (Print)

While the history of humanity itself may not have a purpose, the writing of historical accounts does. Resonating with Foucault’s approach to history is the view that the writing of history should promote an ideology. If, as Foucault declares, a claim to knowledge really is nothing but an attempt to overpower others, then retelling history serves the purpose of gaining power for some repressed group. John Barth's fiction is centered on rewriting fictions of the past, either "literary" or "historical." Most of Barth's novels deal with a search for origins, an original myth. The present paper is based upon one particular case of rewriting in Barth's corpus, namely, the transformation of the Anglo-American poet Ebenezer Cooke's 1708 mock-heroic poem, "The Sot-Weed Factor," into the 1960 novel of the same title. Barth re-imagines Cooke as a naïve poet and avowed virgin who, after securing the title "poet laureate of Maryland," leaves England for his father's tobacco plantation in the New World. By the novel's end, Barth's Cooke has lost his virginity, regained his lost estate, rejected both poetry and philosophy. Theorists Linda Hutcheon and Brian McHale, for instance, regard Barth's novel as a major landmark in the development of postmodernist historical fiction, while Amy J. Elias considers The Sot-Weed Factor both an early instance of what she calls the post-1960s metahistorical romance and a direct progenitor of such later examples of that genre as Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. Thus, over the past two decades The Sot-Weed Factor has been thought of primarily as a novel that looks forward, prefiguring postmodernist developments in historical fiction. This point of view seems particularly valid when one takes into account the novel's subversive attitude towards "official" historical accounts and its playful flouting of realist aesthetics, both of which are considered defining characteristics of postmodernism.hile the history of humanity itself may not have a purpose, the writing of historical accounts does. Resonating with Foucault’s approach to history is the view that the writing of history should promote an ideology. If, as Foucault declares, a claim to knowledge really is nothing but an attempt to overpower others, then retelling history serves the purpose of gaining power for some repressed group. John Barth's fiction is centered on rewriting fictions of the past, either "literary" or "historical." Most of Barth's novels deal with a search for origins, an original myth. The present paper is based upon one particular case of rewriting in Barth's corpus, namely, the transformation of the Anglo-American poet Ebenezer Cooke's 1708 mock-heroic poem, "The Sot-Weed Factor," into the 1960 novel of the same title. Barth re-imagines Cooke as a naïve poet and avowed virgin who, after securing the title "poet laureate of Maryland," leaves England for his father's tobacco plantation in the New World. By the novel's end, Barth's Cooke has lost his virginity, regained his lost estate, rejected both poetry and philosophy. Theorists Linda Hutcheon and Brian McHale, for instance, regard Barth's novel as a major landmark in the development of postmodernist historical fiction, while Amy J. Elias considers The Sot-Weed Factor both an early instance of what she calls the post-1960s metahistorical romance and a direct progenitor of such later examples of that genre as Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. Thus, over the past two decades The Sot-Weed Factor has been thought of primarily as a novel that looks forward, prefiguring postmodernist developments in historical fiction. This point of view seems particularly valid when one takes into account the novel's subversive attitude towards "official" historical accounts and its playful flouting of realist aesthetics, both of which are considered defining characteristics of postmodernism.Keywords: post modernism, parody, myth, antiquity.