The essay attempts to establish the figure of John Fowles as a parodie writer who, through pastiche and experiment, places himself as one of those so-called 'classic' postmodernist authors (like Doris Lessing or Angus Wilson in the sixties). They will influence a second generation of writers (like Salman Rushdie or D.M. Thomas) who use parody in a freer and more polemic way, in a decade that is beginning to be known as 'the golden time of imitation'.