The World Of Fictionality In Flaubert's Parrot

Julian Barnes,who is called "the chameleon of British letters",is one of the unusually gifted British contemporary writers.In 1984,he received considerable praise with the publication of Flaubert's Parrot,which was nominated for The Man Booker Prize.Told in a variety of different formats,the novel creates a world of fictionality and questions our assumptions about what history is and how we discover the facts of history.Virtually every chapter offers an alternate way of approaching the "facts" of Flaubert,illustrating how our vision changes with the format and perspective.The research is based on close reading to the text Flaubert's Parrot,and thorough and detailed evidences are drawn from the text to demonstrate the diversified devices Barnes employs to highlight the fictionality in history and biography writing and to challenge readers' confidence in "authoritative truth" in historical records.This thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One introduces that Barnes displays a world full of replicas while the original is nowhere to seek.Chapter Two investigates different versions of Flaubert's biography,which aims to deconstruct a "real" Flaubert.Chapter Three examines Barnes' technique of fusing factual evidence and imagination together,which puts readers in disturbing ontological confusion.The thesis comes to the conclusion that Flaubert's Parrot stimulates readers to wonder whether the truth about what really happened can ever be purely or objectively known,because history and biography writing inevitably involves artifices and fictionality,and any attempt to grasp the historical truth is doomed to failure.