Historiography In Julian Barnes' Novels

Julian Barnes(1946-)is one of the most prominent contemporary novelists writing in the English language,a focus of critical attention worldwide.Julian Barnes is an author with a strong historical consciousness.Despite the fact that his work as a whole demonstrates prevalent heterogeneity,an acute historical consciousness and references to literary theories on history can be found beneath its flexibility and versatility.This dissertation aims at a systematic study of Julian Barnes'historiography,attempting to depict its presentation of history,expound on the development of Barnes's historical consciousness embedded in the presentation,and detect the purposes thereof and its bearings on the present by reading closely ten novels spanning across Barnes's over thirty years of writing career,namely,Metroland(1980),Before She Met Me(1982),Flaubert's Parrot(1984),History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters(1989),The Porcupine(1992),England,England(1998),Arthur and George(2005),The Sense of an Ending(2011),Levels of Life(2013)and The Noise of Time(2016),putting them within the context of the development of historical philosophy in literary studies,and drawing mainly upon the theories of New Historicism and historiographic meta-fiction.This dissertation proposes that Barnes's historiography is a logical system with three organic dimensions:to deconstruct authoritative history,to construct multi-dimensional history,and to pursue historical truth.Although Barnes's historiography has a special affinity with contemporary historical and literary theories and is "postmodern" in that it develops along the line of New Historicism and demonstrates features of historiographic meta-fiction in its presentation of history,it is not just an intertextual reflection of these theories.Barnes's historiography has surpassed the category of postmodernism in its pursuit of historical truth.Barnes'historiography subverts the objective and monistic grand narratives of authoritative history and presents a discontinuous,pluralistic,multi-dimensional and multi-faceted picture of history through delving into the mechanisms of memory and the use of various postmodern narrative strategies and techniques such as parody and allegory,while in the meantime he has as the purpose of his historiography the pursuit of historical truth,always searching for some form of "certainty" and trying to determining history's bearings on the present.This dissertation proceeds in four chapters.Chapter One proffers a cultural-historical context and theoretical framework for the study of Barnes'historiography by delineating the development of historical philosophy as reflected in literary studies,briefly summarizing Hayden White's theory on New Historicism and Linda Hutcheon's theory on historiographic meta-fiction,and discussing Barnes'historiography in relation to the traditions of British historical novel.Chapter Two analyzes how Barnes' historiography subverts the grand,authoritative narratives of history by deconstructing the objectivity of history and revealing the texuality of history.The unreliability of both historical evidence and historical narrators undermines the objectivity of history,and proves that history can only be narrated and constructed as a text;on the other hand,through the self-reflexive characteristic of historiographic meta-fiction and the adoption of various postmodern narrative strategies and techniques such as shifting in time and space,collaging of different versions,and changing narrative perspectives,Barnes delineates a fictional,fragmented and multi-dimensional picture of history,subverting the grand narratives of authoritative history and underscores the texuality of history.Chapter Three further delves into Barnes's delineation and construction of multi-dimensional histories from two opposite but complementary sets of perspectives:the personal and the national,the marginalized and the authoritative.By discussing the influence of the mechanism of memory on both individual and national identities,giving voices to the oppressed and marginalized narrators,and deconstructing and revising the authoritative histories of both Communism and Capitalism,Barnes brings to life histories finer,pluralistic,and closer to historical truth.Chapter Four focuses on Barnes' pursuit of historical truth.Despite his realization that history is fictional,inaccessible and depends on interpretations,Barnes never gives up his search for some kind of "certainty" while subverting the grand narratives of history.The pursuit of historical truth serves as the purpose of Barnes' historiography and runs through his oeuvre.Historical truth in Barnes' novels can manifest in many forms,such as love,hope,music,personal identity,but essentially it is about history's bearings on the present.