Butler is an educator, editor, and critic. In the essay below, he discusses Fowles's focus on freedom, Existentialism, Poststructuralism, and intertextuality in his novels.

Below, Broich analyzes "The Enigma " in the context of the mimetic and aesthetic traditions of British short fiction, acknowledging the story's seminal influence on the postmodern, experimental short story form.

In the excerpt below, Onega examines the major themes and structural devices of Fowles's novels.

One of the central concerns of metafiction from Borges to Barth—or perhaps, more accurately, from Laurence Sterne to Barth—has been the reanimation and expansion of the commonplace that each man's life is a novel of which that man is the author. If the commonplace is accepted, it follows that almost all novels are about "novels"; and that a novel in which the problem of fictiveness becomes explicit will be required in order to satisfy the thirst of the ironic consciousness...

In the following excerpt, Tarbox examines the underlying theme of Fowles's novels, analyzing the trials that his protagonists undergo in order to achieve self-realization and authenticity.

In the following essay, Sofinskaya considers the interaction among mysterious, symbolic aspects and ordinary, realistic events in Fowles's short fiction, assessing his contribution to the development of the short story genre.