This dissertation treats a major theme which remains constant throughout the fiction of John Fowles: the potential for an individual's transcendence of perceptual limitations, which may lead to an achievement of existential freedom through transcendent awareness. The study demonstrates that Fowles's manipulation of geographic and temporal settings provides the means for his characters to attain self-awareness. Fowles uses setting and historical reference to project various world views for his characters to work within or against. Attainment of transcendent self-awareness is delineated metaphorically in terms of Jungian archetypes of individuation. The development of epochs and Jungian archetypes as metaphors of transcendent consciousness are traced through Fowles's four novels, The Collector, The Magus, The French Lieutenant's Woman, and Daniel Martin, and in his novella, 'The Ebony Tower.'