Postmodern Realistic Features Of Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot

The 2011 Man Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes is one of the most prominent British novelists in the world's contemporary literary realm.Unlike his peers such as Martin Amis,Kazuo Ishiguro or Salman Rushdie,Julian Barnes seems harder to be categorized,but the label “postmodern(experimentalist)writer” attached to him has been taken for granted for too long.However,Barnes does not fall into the abyss of postmodern nihilism.Instead,he reveals much humanistic concern by resorting to realism.This thesis questions the appropriateness of this label and attempts to explore the feasibility of classifying the style of his fiction as postmodern realistic by combining contextual and textual studies through the analysis of his highly “experimental” work — Flaubert's Parrot.The internal relationship between Julian Barnes' s world view with his outlook on literary writing,and the style of postmodern realism is first explored in an attempt to prove that Barnes' s adoption of such a distinctive literary genre is no coincidence,but is decided by the then historical background,ideological trend,and his writing philosophy.Barnes is an individual who has been influenced by the socio-political and cultural turn from radicalness to conservatism in the 1970s-80 s and also by the ideological trend of aesthetic pluralism and the academia's changing attitude towards genre and realism.Also,as a writer,Barnes emphasizes the relation between fiction and truth and considers fiction as an essentially realistic form.His support of the unity of style and theme in fiction writing also contributes to the formation of the postmodern realistic style of his works.The postmodern realistic features of Flaubert's Parrot – the most representative work from the Barnesian canon – are analyzed in terms of its themes and narrative art respectively.Two themes of the novel exhibit obvious postmodern realistic characteristics: failed but inspiring search for the historical truth,and incomplete denial of language's referential function.Besides,the novel also presents the unique narrative art of postmodern realism through its inheritance and transcendence of the aesthetic styles of realism,modernism and postmodern experimentalism,especially in light of two aspects: its narrative structure of a complete plot with the technique of collage and pastiche,and its use of language as subject of rhetoric.The thesis argues that Flaubert's Parrot is a piece of postmodern realistic work and hopes to offer an inspiration to redefine Julian Barnes who has always been a writer caring for the literary past and the humanity at large.Under the disguise of postmodern experiment is his revision of the traditional realism and his incisive deliberation about the topics of history,truth,identity,morality,marriage,etc.which all human beings face.