A Historiographic Metafictional Study Of A History Of The World In 10^? Chapters

Julian Barnes is an outstanding British writer. His works have a strong sense of heterogeneity, experimental-ness and originality. Besides, blurring the boundaries of genres by means of using postmodern writing techniques like parody, collage and textual hybridization, Barnes' s works defy categorization. A History of the World in 10? Chapters is one of his masterpieces. The novel adopts a non-linear strategy of narrative, which embodies Barnes' s postmodern view of history.Guided by Linda Hutcheon's theory of historiographic metafiction, this thesis purports to make a tentative study of Barnes' s postmodern view of history in A History of the World in 10? Chapters: History is a human construct; it is non-linear, which bears such features as textuality, discontinuity and fragmentation; when the History is deconstructed, the history of the marginalized needs to be reconstructed.In addition to the introduction and conclusion, this thesis is composed of three body chapters. Chapter one analyzes Barnes' s application of parody and intertextualtiy, for the purpose of revealing the fictionality and the textuality of history. Chapter two analyzes Barnes' s narrative strategy of collage and his opposition of some metanarratives like the Enlightenment, for the sake of subverting linear history and highlighting the discontinuity and fragmentation of history. Chapter three focuses upon how Barnes gives voices to the suppressed, thereby reconstructing the history of the marginalized.Based on the analyses in the main body, we can conclude that Barnes is a postmodern novelist with a strong subversive spirit: with the application of his unique historiograhphic metafictional strategies, Barnes' s postmodern historical writing subverts the conventional historical narrative, making people reconsider the conventional idea of historical truth.