John Fowles의 The Collector 연구 = A Study of John Fowles' The Colletor

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Collector is John Fowles' specific investigation into physical aspects of captivity and freedom. The theme of the persecuted maiden. as we see in The Beauty and the Beast, is a stock property of gothic romance. Fowles takes this romance subject and updates it, infusing it with psychological and moral dimensions.
The structure of the novel is the juxtaposition of two orders of mind: the captor Clegg's pathetic but terrifying self-enclosure and deadness, and the captive Miranda's imaginatively transformed self-awareness and vital love of life. While the first part is Clegg's account of his obsession and his forced imprisonment of Miranda, the second part consists of Miranda's secret diary written during her incarceration. And the third and fourth parts are Clegg's again as the two parts' coda. Clegg's style is the image of his dull, chiche-ridden, and impervious mind, as contrasted to Miranda's diary which is the breath of life in the suffocating atmosphere of Clegg's claustrophobic mind.
The Collector is, in a sense, the world of Shakespeare's The Tempest debased and inverted, with no Prospero God-like figure, no 'brave New World,' and no freedom but only death of beauty and life. Fowles' Miranda is almost characterized like a prototype, beautiful, artistic, and bright. Though Clegg is a potential lover as Ferdinand, however, he is actually a murder as well as a monster, destroying beauty and life as Caliban.
Clegg's collection of butterflies and his 'collection' of Miranda as one of his victims denotes his so-called 'collector-mentality,' which is Fowles' consistant target. But Miranda, as an intellectual snob, is ironically another collector who collects her spiritual mentor's mind.
Clegg's sub-human nature reminds us of a kind of 'underground man' in our time, for he is lonely, withdrawn, and anti-social. According to the fact that the emphasis on personal choice is central to Fowles's philosophy of artisitc creation, Clegg's irresponsibility demonstrates that he is an 'unauthentic man' with self-deception in traditional existential terminology. Even if Miranda's struggle for freedom and her self-awareness of beauty and existence is familiar with Existentialism and its jargon, she finally no exit in the existential labyrinth, where she only finds herself playing the absurd role in Twentieth-Century parable.