On The Writing Of Memory In Julian Barnes' Novels

Julian Barnes(1946-)was a rising star in the British literary scene in the 1980 s.With Flaubert's Parrot(1984),he was the first to push the British novel further into non-fiction,along with Martin Amis and Ian Mc Ewan.His bold innovations in fictional form have enriched the novel's diversity,but his brilliant postmodern formal experiments are not the only hallmark of Barnes' s fiction,which is always concerned with the human heart and emotions,revealing a concern for individual life and survival.Memory writing is one of the main ways in which Barnes' work looks at the individual.In Barnes' novels,memory is both the vehicle and the object of narrative.From Flaubert's Parrot to A History of the World in 101/2 chapters,Barnes uses spatial and temporal memory metaphors to trace reality,question history and celebrate love and truth through memory writing,proving not only that emotion and ethics can exist in postmodernist novels,but also that they can be the main thesis of such novels with a perfect combination of formal and thematic aspects.In the context of postmodernism,Barnes' s novels embody a return to the humanist spiritual tradition and represent,to a certain extent,a new humanistic concern in the contemporary social environment.Memory gives people a sense of self and identity,and guarantees the survival of the human self,but the construction and flow of memory,its "imprecision" and "change",puts the identity based on the past in jeopardy.In England,England and The Sense of an Ending,Barnes explores the complex relationship between memory and identity as a basis for sorting out the problems faced by human memory and identity in real-life situations and exploring the identity anxieties of modern man.His exploration shows that in a modern society full of uncertainty and in the increasingly important daily life of individuals,memory is not static and subjects no longer have a constant sense of identity.Both collectively and individually,the repositioning of the self should be holistic and historically conscious,and in the pursuit of a sense of integrity,continuity and unity of identity,both must courageously take responsibility for memory and the self.Unlike the constructive nature of memory,the storage of memory is the process of reliably preserving and retrieving input in its original form,a process that constructs one's memory into a vast storehouse of ideas,discourse,images and imagery.In novels such as The Noise of Time and A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters,Barnes sees literature as a site of memory,exploring and reflecting on literary art and religion,using fiction to discern the past,to remember history,and to seek the redemption of memory for all humanity.His creation shows that the fiction of fiction can bring people back to the past,and that in the face of traumatic memories from history,human beings must be brave enough to dig out the truth of the past,remember the sufferings of those who lived through history,and take up the ethical and moral obligation of memory.In the chaos of modern society,in a world that has been demystified,Barnes sees love as the path to human salvation,advocating that people take love as the starting point for civic virtue,uphold their faith in love,express themselves in love,and let love lead them to truth or reality.The first chapter is based on the form of memory,treating memory as a medium and exploring the theme of historical truth presented in Barnes' novels from the perspectives of spatial memory metaphor and temporal memory metaphor.The third chapter discusses the relationship between memory and time,the static storage of memory,and the reflection on art and religion in Barnes' s novels based on the imitation of memory and the ethics of memory,which leads to the discussion of the idea of love advocated by Barnes.