In the essay below, Barnum offers a comprehensive overview of Fowles 's The Ebony Tower, noting similarities between the stories, particularly the recurring theme of missed opportunities, as well as similarities between Fowles's short fiction and his novels.

In the following excerpt, Barnum analyzes the predominant themes and imagery of the works collected in The Ebony Tower.

In the essay below, Wilson argues that a "Grail Quest theme" links the stories of The Ebony Tower, citing literary precedents and structural and technical similarities to The Magus.

In the essay below, Salys explains the allusions to medieval fiction and painting in The Ebony Tower, making connections between the modern and medieval contexts of the novella.

In the following excerpt, Foster provides a thematic analysis of the collection The Ebony Tower.

Below, Alderman shows how a fundamental convention of the short story genre informs the themes and structure of The Ebony Tower.

In the following essay, McDaniel traces the character development of the protagonists of The Ebony Tower in terms of a paralysis-action dichotomy that she identifies as a major feature of Fowles's fiction, emphasizing their relationship to the protagonists of his novels.

In the following essay, Holmes compares and contrasts similarities and differences among the three stories, asserting that the stylistic devices, thematic development, and narrative mode of "The Cloud" surpass the originality of the other two.

In the following essay, Bevis explicates the function and purpose of Fowles's allusions to the Greek myth of Artemis and Actaeon in The Ebony Tower.

In the following essay, Sollisch relates the principal themes of The Ebony Tower to Fowles's version of humanity's Fall: "not from innocence to knowledge but from knowledge to mystery."

Below, Kapp offers a mixed appraisal of The Ebony Tower.

In the following assessment of The Ebony Tower, Lehmann-Haupt focuses on connections between the novella and stories in the collection, concluding that the work as a whole is "a thoroughly pleasing entertainment and a thoroughly mystifying conundrum."

[Fowles's] collection entitled The Ebony Tower takes [Marie de France's] Anglo-Norman lay of Eliduc as its focal point, or so the author states in his headnote to the translation which occupies the midpoint of the volume. In this note he says that his book owes its "mood," and partly "its theme and setting," to medieval literature…. (p. 351) [Marie, however], can be described as a writer of distinctly feminist tone. This is hardly the case with John Fowles, a...