The soldiers’ picnic: a study of narrative truth

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the English Program, Department of Arts and Critical Enquiry, Faculty of Humanities, La Trobe University, Bundoora.

The Soldiers’ Picnic is a metafictional narrative that investigates the relevance of an enigma to the understanding and construction of global plots. An enigma is an elaborate system of meaning theorised by Roland Barthes in S/Z. The book was published in French in 1970 and English in 1974. This thesis deals with the technicalities of an enigma at the level of practice and creates a model for future use. An enigma relies on covert sources of antagonism which this model attempts to identify and amplify. Seven novels have been used in the construction and testing of the model.