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Abstract. The article deals with Giles Goatboy, a novel by John Barth, a prominent contemporary American writer. The text is analyzed from the viewpoint of its relation to the genre of academic fiction. It is stated that the author succeeded in creating an allegoric construction, bearing a formal likeness to an academic novel. The principal sources of intertextual allusions are described in details. The article is based on the works of A. Luxemburg, A. Zverev, J. Stark, P. Tobin, I. Christensen, B. Stonehill, M.F. Schulz, R. Scholes and R. Imhof. Despite the abundance of political, historical, cultural allusions, the emphasis is made on J. Barth’s ludic reframing of J. Campbell’s theory, as the biography of protagonist Billy (George) obviously corresponds to the standard life story of mythical heroes, as shown in J. Campbell’s A Hero with a Thousand Faces. The article singles out T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland, W. Shakespeare’s plays, Dante’s Inferno as well as the psychoanalytic theory as major intertextual links, exploited by J. Barth. It contains an extensive stylistic analysis of Taliped, an incorporated play, parodying the classical Sophocles’s Oedipus the King. It is maintained in the conclusion that Giles Goatboy, thanks to its very complicated structure and the multi-level system of intertextual references, can be considered to be one of the most intricate texts in the history of the 20th century fiction.
Keywords: academic fiction, parody, intertextuality, allusion, comparative mythology, psychoanalytic theory, self-conscious novel, postmodern metafiction.