"You Can't Get by Without the Dream": Belief in Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters

• Authors: Eszter Tory
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper presents a less examined dimension of Barnes’s writings, which is the dominant role that belief plays in the development of his characters in A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. The main argument of my essay is whether love can be considered as the most significant proposition of the novel. A content-based analysis of the novel’s “The Survivor” chapter demonstrates Barnes’ sceptic attitude towards postmodern rationalism, while the examination of "Parenthesis" and "Dream" chapter shows that hope, which becomes synonymous with belief in the novel, is actually the most permeating phenomenon in the novel.

Keywords

EN

belief; narrative; spirituality; temptation; uncertainty

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Romanian Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 137-143

Dates

published

2014-03-01

online

2014-05-01

Contributors

author

Eszter Tory

• Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest

References

• Barnes, Julian. 2009(1989). A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. London: Vintage.
• Drag, Wojciech. 2007. The Search is All?: The Pursuit of Meaning in Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot, Staring at the Sun and A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. (MA Literature, Culture and Society) Cardiff: University of Glamorgan. [Online]. Available: http://www.julianbarnes.com/docs/drag.pdf [Accessed 2010, June 11].
• Feuerbach, Ludwig. 1841. The Essence of Christianity. Trans. Marian Evans. London: Savill and Enders.
• Guignery, Vanessa. 2006. The Fiction of Julian Barnes: A reader’s guide to essential criticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Holmes, Frederick M. 2009. Julian Barnes (New British Fiction). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Hutcheon, Linda. 1986.“The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History.” Cultural Critique, 5: 179-207. [Online]. Available: http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/paa25/Papers/PoMo_files/Linda%20Hutcheon.pdf [Accessed 2013 March 29]
• Hutcheon, Linda. 2004. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. Taylor and Francis e-Library.
• Kotte, Claudia. 1997. "Random Patterns? Orderly Disorder in Julian Barnes's A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters." Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 22(1): 107-28.
• Locke, Richard. 1989. “Flood of Forms.” New Republic, 201(23): 40-3.
• Moseley, Merritt. 1997. Understanding Julian Barnes. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
• Tate, Andrew. 2011. “‘An Ordinary Piece of Magic’: Religion in the Work of Julian Barnes.” Julian Barnes: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Ed. Sebastian Groes and Peter Childs. London: Continuum.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/rjes-2014-0017