Understanding John Barth’s “The Literature of Replenishment”

Abstract

John Barth, born on 27^th May, 1930, is a prominent and leading contemporary postmodernist. He is an American novelist, short story writer and essayist, who has redefined fiction in America. John Barth’s two landmark essays, “The Literature of Exhaustion” (1967) and “The Literature of Replenishment” (1980), includes the most prominent ideas of John Barth on Literature and writings. Since many misread his essay “The Literature of Exhaustion”, and had mistakenly assumed that John Barth meant that literature is useless, he wanted to bring clarity and also reconsider some of the statements he had made in the 1967 essay and hence published “The Literature of Replenishment” in 1980. Many misread or misunderstood John Barth because of his language which is quite complex. The aim of this research paper is to demystify the language of Barth and thereby help in the understanding of his essay “The Literature of Replenishment”.