Banville's novels offer a difficulty to the reader, since he uses many images, metaphors, puns, indirect narration as, in other words, dramatisation with a shift in time, which tests the reader's awareness and holds his attention all through, i.e. He writes for the high-brow reader. The stream of consciousness also added to the complex style. The voices of his narrators, or the mouthpieces, that he uses, are all modern in their sense of rejection and anger at the absurdity and misery of the world.

In this thesis, an attempt will be made to highlight on six of Banville's novels in terms of themes, characterisation and technique. The thesis will be divided into three chapters and a conclusion.

It deals with Ireland, giving some details about the Irish history, and it is going to cast light on the social situations that prevailed in Ireland. Moreover, there will be a stress on the literary movement since it started, with no re

To his horror Copernicus sees that his research takes on a life of its own, like his own personability, increasingly remote from the real world he was supported to explain. 21.

and the Anglo-Irish war (1918-21)"5. After that and through out the years till the First World-War, the number of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy was reducing, in addition to the fact that a lot of them served with the British forces.

It was barbarism on a grand scale. Mathematical edifices of heart rending frailty and delicacy were shattered at a stroke...........Only vaguely did he understand the nature of his plight. 19.

Ireland had a close relation-ship with England for a very long period of time. It actually started during the twelfth century through an invasion by the Anglo-Normans. After the Norman's invasion Ireland's relation with its neighbours was weak, until the Tudor period to whom Ireland was of great importance. The Tudor had their fears of the Catholic Europe, and Ireland seemed to be their protection. Starting from this point, England began to have the upper hand on every thing in Ireland. In the introduction of Ancestral Voices, by Otto Rauchbauer he describes the state in Ireland:

These pictures seem like fever hallucinations, but in fact the hawk-like monsters signify the worldly attacks which the young astronomer tries to avoid. The birds become shinning and beautiful when he realises the importance of the natural real life, which he had misunderstood throughout his researches. The lovely creatures hold in their beaks the fragments of the truth. Copernicus achieves a version of the truth only "when dying of a haemorrhage of the brain"48.

The novel is divided into four parts. The opening book relates his childhood and education, the second deals with the strange contrast and relationship between him and his brother. The third is narrated by his student Rhetricus, who describes Copernicus's subjectivity and manages to publish his book 'Doctor Revolutionibus. The fourth part is, again in the third person and focuses on his disappointment, sickness and mental turmoil. This pattern of narration supplies the reader with a complete picture of the protagonist and his surroundings, as well as the grave circumstances that he has to confront,

The astronomical system which he believed that he can control and yield to the realisation of his theory has become a ruling master. His research has turned into something personal which cannot be a benefit to anyone, "His book was not about the world, but about itself"22. Copernicus fails to apply the process of change in astronomy to a similar theory of change and alteration in life. His concept faces the main obstacle of the unbridgeable gap between an intellectual revolutionary method and an imaginative urge. There is a lack of human contact between the real and the visionary.

and he suffers ill health, he tries to get rid of Rhetricus, who, in his turn, comes to realise that the truth cannot be attained in such a world of disorder and ends up in seclusion and fear.

The life of Andreas is the exact opposite of Copernicus's existence. His low depraved life does not change his belief that life is something that we must enjoy, whenever we have a chance. He rejects the ideal pure attitude of deprivation and the shunning of actual flesh-like experiences. Banville uses Andreas as an exterior urge drawing the astronomer's attention to another real world under the soaring skies. Even after his death, he returns in the form of a ghost nagging at

Modern themes and subject matters of the twentieth century needed a suitable shape, and this has been Banville's main concern; which places him among the great novelists such as Henry James, James Joyce and Beckett. These major writers used the power and beauty of language as a media to save man from the confusion and the absurdity of the modern world.

Banville believed that national literatu

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Approximate Word count = 39226
Approximate Pages = 157 (250 words per page double spaced)