• DR. SUNIT KUMAR BERA

Unlike Barth, Coover assumes that his readers already count themselves among the intellectual elite that enjoy the exoteric pleasures of post-contemporary literature. That assumption precludes the necessity of Barthian didacticism, but it does create different problems for the writer who must entertain this audience While Cover need not persuade his already converted readers of the value of performance literature or of the necessity of careful reading, he must address their demand for innovative techniques even as he tries to use these techniques for his own peculiar aesthetic purposes. More specifically, Coover typically attempts to fulfil his sophisticated audience’s desire for the unusual at the same time that he argues for the value of literature that he argues for the value of literature that appeals to the dark elements of our psyche. For in his reconstruction of...folktales and Bible stories, in his construction of tales from elements of popular culture, Coover seeks to reveal human motivations and desires that are timeless, that inhabit, in Borges’ words, “that concave basin which is the collective memory” (33); furthermore, those timeless desires he focuses on involve fear, greed, lust, violence--those elements of the collective unconscious civilization seeks to repress. The final type of story considered here includes metafiction like “The Magic Poker,” “The Gingerbread House,” “The Elevator,” and “The Babysitter,” stories made up of many individual narrative units that contradict each other and defy the reader who wishes to put them together logically. Throughout this collection of metafiction, Coover disorients his readers, not merely by suggesting that traditional fictional modes are worn out, but also by suggesting that for all their sophistication and rationality, readers of contemporary fiction are nonetheless susceptible to the fears, cruelties, and primitive passions which are at the heart of “simple” fairy tales.

Metaphor, urbanologists, stream-of-conscious, musings, Bible, metafiction, Pricksongs, Descants and Consciousness.

"THE FOLKTALE: MYTH AND FORM", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.8, Issue 2, page no.411-424, February-2021, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2102045.pdf

"THE FOLKTALE: MYTH AND FORM", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.8, Issue 2, page no. pp411-424, February-2021, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2102045.pdf