Reading John Banville through Jean Baudrillard

About this book

"This book aims to trace manifestations of Baudrillardean thinking in the contemporary fiction (seven novels and two plays) by John Banville, written in the period 1997 to 2015. Questions addressed concern the kinds of elements, attributable to what Jean Baudrillard terms the 'symbolic' order and the orders of simulacra--and notably, the latter are sometimes referred to as 'orders of simulation' and they are variously considered to be three, or four--might be discernible in these works and what insights, especially with regard to the self and relationships to 'the real', might be gleaned from these. Baudrillardean ideas such as the notion the hologram, the concept of 'life-in-death,' and--as in chapter 6--changing perceptions of demarcation lines between what is human and what is not, are also at focus, as are phenomena that, according to Baudrillard's thinking, move outside a realm of simulacra. The various chapters in this book--variations, as it were, on certain Baudrillardean themes--are linked through such issues"--