Download or read book The Significance of Narrative Strategies in Historiographic Metafiction in Julian Barne s A History of the World in 10 1 2 Chapters written by Annika Klement and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2018-09-14 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 1,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, course: History in Contemporary Novels, language: English, abstract: In this term paper I will discuss how historiographic metafiction “reflects upon its own strategies of writing and constructing histories by drawing attention to the constructedness [and] subjectivity”. For this purpose, I will firstly elaborate the relationship of historio-graphic metafiction and narration in order to examine to which intention the narrative strategies are used by taking the example of the postmodernist novel A History of the World in 10 1⁄2 Chapters by Julian Barnes.
Download or read book The Pursuit of Meaning in Julian Barnes s A History of the World in 10 1 2 Chapters written by Tessa Tumbrägel and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-01-27 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2012 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Literatur, Note: 1,0, Universität Passau, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: To the new generation of postmodern writers, particularly from the western hemisphere, the idea of „meaning‟ and „essential truth‟ is a relict from the past, an old-fashioned and embarrassing concept that has no validity in a heterogeneous world. In postmodern times, the notion of „meaning‟ has become questionable, even contestable. There reigns a deep-rooted distrust of any „big idea‟ which presumes to account for an overall representation of life disregarding its heterogeneity. Hence, the metaphysical systems of the “grand narratives” (Wakefield 1990: 22) of the pre-postmodernist era can no longer be accepted as final authorities for the sovereignty of interpretation. In my term paper, however, I a m going to demonstrate that the idea of meaning and its pursuit is not dead in Julian Barnes‟s fifth novel A History of the World in 10 1⁄2 Chapters (HW). Although it is often - and in my view unjustly- referred to as a perfect example of postmodern fiction, the novel rather plays with postmodern philosophies and frequently questions them without ever constructing certainties. This is especially true in relation to Barnes concept of history, the main theme of the novel. In fact, it is a rather depressing concept since history is portrayed as an arbitrary collection of stories which “are put together in the same ways that novelists use to put together figments of their imaginations to display an ordered world, a cosmos, where only disorder or chaos might appear” (White 1978: 125). In this manner, the author subtly unsettles our common imaginations of history and historiography and demonstrates that, in the end, everything is largely fictional. Confronted, however, with the postmodern scepticism of knowledge and values, Barnes does not deny the human longing for patterns of order and stable contexts of reference. This undeniably schizophrenic or at least inconsistent attitude of the notion of meaning will be further analyzed throughout my term paper. First of all, I am going to have a closer look on Barnes‟s relationship towards the postmodern crisis of meaning and, with regard to that, his concept of history epitomized in A History of the World - 2 - in 10 1⁄2 Chapters. Subsequently, I will then examine its implications on the pursuit of meaning and its metamorphoses – the search for religion, art and love – and investigate how they are used as means against the cruelty of history.
Download or read book Does Our Life Have a Meaning If History Doesn t An Examination of Parenthesis in Julian Barnes Novel A History of the World in 10 5 Chapters written by Cornelia Neumann and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-07 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 1999 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0 (A), Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institute for Anglistics/American Studies), course: Contemporary British Fiction: Footnotes to History, 14 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" by Julian Barnes is neither easy to understand nor to classify. Both problems, comprehensibility and classification, emerge from the same root: The book's complex structure. The 10 1/2 chapters seem to be autonomous episodes rather than parts of the same novel. Therefore, some critics have argued that it was rather 'a gathering of prose pieces, some fiction, others rather like essays' and no homogeneous piece of prose. On the other hand, they have also discovered elements which do connect the chapters. Therefore, one could conclude that if A History [...] does not fit into established patterns of the genre novel, it must be a post-modern novel, as the linking elements make it more than just a collection 'of prose pieces'. The other main problem, comprehensibility, is tightly connected with the issues structure and categorisation. Given that readers have discovered connecting elements and found that they add common meaning to the single chapters, they might still have unanswered questions. Does such a complicated structure imply a certain meaning that is beyond the content of the single stories and their common motifs? Many post-modern books do not provide explanations, but A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters does. The 'half chapter', called 'Parenthesis', is the key to the novel. It contains clear, unambiguous statements about three major issues: history, love and truth. Although it does not explain the novel, it philosophies about its main topics and thus implies the significance of the book's literary patterns. I have chosen to examine 'Parenthesis' because it contains essential thoughts which make the boo
Download or read book History And Narrative A Conversation With The World written by Diana Croitoru and published by LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'History and Narrative: A Conversation with the World. Salman Rushdie and Julian Barnes' is intended a critical analysis of major literary writings, which define the evolution of contemporary literature as an assertion of the essential role of the creative consciousness in challenging previous forms of representation and in assuming a reflexive perspective on historicity. By exploring the inexhaustible resources of tradition and historicity, the fictional writings of Salman Rushdie and Julian Barnes state the premises for a re-contextualised discourse, reflecting the stringent realities of the contemporary age. The present approach attempts to establish an intrinsic interrelatedness between the evolution of the fictional discourse and the theoretical constructs that systematise the narrative. Under the form of an integrative critical response, each section (Introduction, Argument, 'Flaubert's Parrot', 'A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters', 'Fury', 'The Moor's Last Sigh', 'East, West', Conclusions, Bibliography) refers to relevant aspects which concern the thematic content, the narrative strategies and the intertextual references pertaining to the respective literary writing
Download or read book Histopias written by Viorel-Dragos Moraru and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like many other postmodernist historical novels, Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10 1⁄2 Chapters and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas fictionalize a personal view of history and examine the relation between historical and fictional narratives. Apart from these metahistorical and metafictional projects, the two novels put forward an original historical account of human life on earth. Barnes's and Mitchell's narratives span millennia and are marked by the interplay of continuity and discontinuity. The latter is shaped by a series of natural and man-made catastrophes, which account for the dystopian character of the various stories that make up the two novels. Barnes and Mitchell have a very practical reason for choosing the dystopian mode: a world in crisis, and especially a world near its end or near its beginning, is a phenomenon that can be more readily analyzed as both a fragment of history and a small-scale version of history as a whole. A histopia is a piece of fiction that uses various moments of crisis, fictional or fictionalized, as episodes of a fragmentary history of the world.
Download or read book A History of the World in 10 1 2 Chapters by Julian Barnes written by Soana Tanjama and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Picture of Reality and History in Julian Barnes A History of the World in 10 1 2 Chapters written by Kathrin Baumann and published by . This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2.0, University of Mannheim, language: English, abstract: This term paper deals with the picture of reality and history in postmodern literature by taking a deeper look at "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" by Julian Barnes. I will argue that mostly our perception of history and reality influence what we believe to be true. I support my argument by providing evidence from secondary sources and examples from the book itself.
Download or read book The Return of the Historical Novel written by Andrew James Johnston and published by Universitatsverlag Winter. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until recently, the critical reception of historical fiction was dominated by two theoretical paradigms: Gyorgy Lukacs's Marxist view and Linda Hutcheon's concept of 'historiographic metafiction'. We are now entering a new phase as the discussion of the historical novel is rapidly becoming more inclusive, more tolerant and, above all, more diverse. It is before the backdrop of these changes in the critical debate that the contributions to this volume are meant to be read. Rather than seeing historical fiction as locked in a clear-cut scheme of teleological succession or assigning to the historical novel specific aesthetic purposes, the articles in this collection seek to probe deeply into the historical novel's potential for providing readers not simply with an understanding of how the image of the past is constructed but also of how attempts to chart forms of historical otherness constitute a specific mode of cultural experience mediated by literature. This desire for a literary experience of historical otherness has recently increased in urgency, even if the historical authenticity one might nostalgically associate with such a project must always elude us. Authors discussed include Walter Scott, John Fowles, Graham Swift, M. J. Vassanji, J. M. Coetzee, Peter Ackroyd, Alan Massie, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel and Jim Crace.
Download or read book HISTOPIAS written by Viorel-Dragos Moraru and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ends of History written by Mok Siu Kit and published by . This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "The Ends of History: the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro, Timothy Mo and Graham Swift" by Siu-kit, Mok, 莫少傑, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of the thesis entitled The Ends of History: The Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro, Timothy Mo and Graham Swift submitted by Mok Siu Kit for the degree of Master of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in August 2005 This thesis is a study of three contemporary historical novels: Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1989), Timothy Mo's An Insular Possession (1986), and Graham Swift's Waterland (1983). Unlike traditional historical novels, these works do not take correspondence to the 'real' history as the principal goal and this is not a criterion in which they are assessed. Adopting Linda Hutcheon's formulation of 'historiographic metafiction' in A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (1988) as a starting point, I will attempt to analyse how narrative strategies of the three novels convey the historical moments and more importantly, how they question the authority of recorded history and concepts of traditional historiography. Thematically, the novels are all concerned about a period of the British Empire, although the underlying connection of the chapters is how these works challenge the received version (or the 'grand narrative') of history in their own different ways. Set in 1956, the year of the Suez Crisis, The Remains of the Day is about a long-serving butler in an English country house who reflects upon his service to his late employer, a disgraced Nazi sympathiser, and his present master, a rich American. The stereotypical image of the butler confronts the boundary of 'realistic' representation and questions the assumptions of the historical era associated with the stereotype. The house provides the grounds for a comparison between English and American attitudes towards history. A more violent clash between different cultures is the subject of An Insular Possession. The title refers to the acquisition of Hong Kong as a colony in 1841, the result of the Sino-British conflict known as the Opium War. The novel is made up of newspaper articles, letters and other documents, which offers an opportunity to investigate historians' reliance on documents and the uses and limitations of the archive. The imperial ambition of the British Empire is reflected in the protagonist's family saga in Waterland. Spanning some two hundred years and covering the Victorian era to the contemporary in 1979/80, the novel investigates the tension between the 'grand narrative' of progress and smaller narratives of individuals. The narrative nature of the documents, so extensively elaborated in Timothy Mo's novel, continues to be a relevant issue in Waterland in the guise of the contrast between history (facts) and fairy-tales (fiction). To sum up, this thesis, as a survey of postmodern narrative techniques in exploring the theme of history in postcolonial or postimperial contexts, studies atypical points of view, forms of representing history, the tension between 'grand' and 'small' narratives, as well as relationships between history and historical locations in the three selected novels. As a means these issues contribute to the questioning of history with an eye to the ends of understanding history. (454 words) DOI: 10.5353/th_b3581264 Subjects: Historiography in literature
Download or read book The Writing of History written by Robert H. Canary and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Conversations with Julian Barnes written by Julian Barnes and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Talks with the British author of Flaubert's Parrot and Arthur & George
Download or read book The Fiction of Julian Barnes written by Vanessa Guignery and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-23 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julian Barnes's work has been marked by great variety, ranging not only from conventional fiction to postmodernist experimentation in such well-known novels as Flaubert's Parrot (1984) and A History of the World in 10 1⁄2 Chapters (1989), but also from witty essays to deeply touching short stories. The responses of readers and critics have likewise varied, from enthusiasm to scepticism, as the substantial volume of critical analysis demonstrates. This Readers' Guide provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the essential criticism on Barnes's work, drawing from a selection of reviews, interviews, essays and books. Through the presentation and assessment of key critical interpretations, Vanessa Guignery provides the most wide-ranging examination of his fiction and non-fiction so far, considering key issues such as his use of language, his treatment of history, obsession, love, and the relationship between fact and fiction. Covering all of the novels to date, from Metroland (1981) to Arthur and George (2005), this is an invaluable introduction to the work of one of Britain's most exciting and popular contemporary writers.
Download or read book Narcissistic Narrative written by Linda Hutcheon and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2013-05-22 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linda Hutcheon, in this original study, examines the modes, forms and techniques of narcissistic fiction, that is, fiction which includes within itself some sort of commentary on its own narrative and/or linguistic nature. Her analysis is further extended to discuss the implications of such a development for both the theory of the novel and reading theory. Having placed this phenomenon in its historical context Linda Hutcheon uses the insights of various reader-response theories to explore the “paradox” created by metafiction: the reader is, at the same time, co-creator of the self-reflexive text and distanced from it because of its very self-reflexiveness. She illustrates her analysis through the works of novelists such as Fowles, Barth, Nabokov, Calvino, Borges, Carpentier, and Aquin. For the paperback edition of this important book a preface has been added which examines developments since first publication. Narcissistic Narrative was selected by Choice as one of the outstanding academic books for 1981–1982.
Download or read book Chaos Bound written by N. Katherine Hayles and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hayles’s point is that the almost simultaneous appearance of interest in complex systems across many disciplines―physics, mathematics, biology, information theory, literature, literary theory―signals a profound paradigm and epistemological shift. She calls the new paradigm ‘orderly disorder.’ This is a timely, informative, and enormously thought-provoking book. — Nancy Craig Simmons ― American Literature N. Katherine Hayles here investigates parallels between contemporary literature and critical theory and the science of chaos. She finds in both scientific and literary discourse new interpretations of chaos, which is seen no longer as disorder but as a locus of maximum information and complexity. She examines structures and themes of disorder in The Education of Henry Adams, Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook, and works by Stanislaw Lem. Hayles shows how the writings of poststructuralist theorists including Barthes, Lyotard, Derrida, Serres, and de Man incorporate central features of chaos theory.
Download or read book An Interpretation of Julian Barnes Novel England England written by Sirinya Pakditawan and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-11 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Hamburg (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Die englische Literatur der neunziger Jahre, 9 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Numerous contemporary British novels display an almost obsessive concern with the notion of Englishness. Hence, they focus on the myths, traditions and attitudes that are regarded as typically English. With its interest in Englishness, the nature of historical truth, and the blurring of boundaries between the authentic and the imitation, Julian Barnes' novel "England, England" (1998), which was short-listed for the Booker prize in 1998, shares important concerns with many contemporary British novels. Hence, this novel shows all the features characteristic of postmodernist historiographic metafiction. That is to say, like other historiographic metafictions, "England, England" is "both intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay[s] claim to historical events and personages." What is more, Barnes' novel also reflects the feature which has been the major focus of attention in most of the critical work on postmodernism, i.e. a self-conscious assessment of the status and function of narrative in literature, history, and theory: "its theoretical self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs (historiographic metafiction) is made the grounds for its rethinking and reworking of the forms and contents of the past." One might be justified in saying that Barnes' novel explores, constructs, parodies, and deconstructs the 'invented traditions' known as 'Englishness'. The novel incorporates a great number of different traces of the English cultural past, including many myths and legends, juxtaposes competing versions of and discourses about Englishness. Additionally, it also explores the complexity of any account of a nation's organically grown cultural memory and
Download or read book Stunned into uncertainty written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
