On The Rewriting Of History And Memory In Barnes' Novels

In the post-modern context,the re-examination of the tradition has become a trend.Julian Barnes has published a series of experimental works,keeping pace with theoretical development in the last century,so he was crowned as a “postmodernist writer”.With the in-depth study of his works,we found that Barnes' use of rewriting techniques is an important feature of his creation.Therefore,in this article,we will proceed from the overall cultural environment and Barnes' career as a writer,briefly summarizing the characteristics of Barnes' writing.Then we will analyze his rewriting strategies of history and memory in detail.We will no longer be limited to the internal research of literary texts,but will combine postmodernism and neo-historicism to broaden our horizons and to explore the discourses and intentions behind the texts.Text analysis combined with moral ethics and social and cultural thinking will reveal that Barnes' rewriting of history and memory,is not a single,shallow play of words,but contains dialogue and confrontation with postmodern ideas.His rewriting not only focuses on reality and individual situation,but also tries to explore a feasible way to solve the dilemma of human,which goes beyond relativism,nihilism,and is full of humanistic care and practical guidance.The introduction part summarizes the research status of Barnes at home and abroad,and expounds the research ideas of this article.The first chapter starts with a brief review of the tendency of contemporary British novel composition from the concept of rewriting.From this,we will summarizes the main characteristics of Barnes' rewriting method.Through Barnes' memoir,interviews and his novels,we can find that the writer always consciously keeps distance from theoretical research and has nostalgia for the humanism tradition of English novels,which also makes his works not only experimental,but also care about human condition.The second chapter analyses 10? Chapter World History.After pointing out the literary background of this work,this paper focuses on analysing the two major methods of Barnes' history rewriting,namely,parody and collage.Barnes dispells the authoritative historical narrative in parody rewriting,but also sees the tendency of relativism after the authoritative narrative disappeared.Therefore he points out the moral and ethical limits of rewriting behaviour from the point view of an individual.At the same time,Barnes breaks the linear historical narrative model with the help of collage.This method not only brings fragmented history,but also gives individuals the possibility to construct their own narration through historical metaphors.The third chapter analyses The Only Story.After pointing out that rewriting of memory frequently occurs in Barnes' works,this paper finds two major methods of Barnes' rewriting of memory,namely self-reflexive rewriting and polyphonic rewriting.In self-reflexive rewriting,Barnes uses constantly changing memories to eliminate the stability of individual memories.He points out that the truth of personal memories lies in the disclosure of individual's sincere emotion rather than the formation of objective records that are completely consistent with past facts.At the same time,in polyphonic rewriting,Barnes achieves reconciliation by allowing the narrative self to re-examine the empirical self as the other.This does not mean that the rewriting of memory is selfdeception,because Barnes also let the self discover and try to understand of the absolute other.By consciously caring for the other,the self finally resolves the sadness and hatred in his memory.The conclusion part summarizes the core points of this paper and also points out some improvements in the future.