The Impact of Myth of Scheherazade on the Postmodernist novel of Chimera by John Barth: A de Manian Reading

The major aim of this study is to show the impact of myth of Scheherezade on the postmodernist narrative style of John Barth. It also tends to subvert Barthian subverted mythology or worldview in the light of Paul de Man''s deconstructive perspectives. The decentralization of what Barth considers as the replenishment of used-up literary conventions in its turn can be decentralized by de Manian rhetorical reading of the text. This article is a reading of Chimera as related to a two-step de Manian reading strategy; first، the detection of figures of speech or topological language and the aberration of each trope، second، the exemplification of allegory of reading in each of the novellas. As de Man proclaims، all the languages are figural، in other words، constituted of denominative and conceptual spheres. The conflict between the two is never resolved within a text and culminates into an aberrant aporia. Such a loophole is what causes the impossibility of reading in any text.