People's Democra University People's Democratic Republic of Algeria University of Tlemcen blic of

235 Pages·2005·1.52 MB·English

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ﻻّ إ ءﳾ ﻻ و ﺔ ﻻّ إ ءﳾ ﻻ و
ﲎﻐﻟا ّﻨ ﻟا ﲎﻏ ﻦﻜﻟ و
ﺮﻫﺎﻇ ﻊﻨﺻ ﻲﻔﻟ
دﺎﻬﳉا
Dedication
To my beloved mother; Dr D. BENBERNOU, my loving
father; Dr. A. LARBI, and my lovely sister; Dr. Y. LARBI, without
whose support and trustworthiness, I would not have accomplished
this research work.
i
Acknowledgements
My sincerest gratitude first and foremost goes to my supervisor Dr W. Mouro
whose generous person is unprecedented and without whom the completion of this thesis
would not have reached its due term. Special recognition to the priceless enlightening
discussions I had the chance to have with her as well as the support, the belief in me, and
the precious advicesheprovided mewith.
Sincerest acknowledgements go to the board of examiners namely: Prof A. Bahous,
Dr. Y. Djafri, Prof F. Bedjaoui, Prof G. Hadjoui, and Prof I. Serir who devoted their
precious time to the reading and evaluation of this humble work.
Solemn gratitudegoes to my teachers and mentors of British Literature, mostly Prof
A. Bahous, Dr Y. Djafri, and Dr. Z. Larbi who have always inspired me through their
lectures as well as their instructional discussions and advice. Similar thanks go to Prof A.
Larbi Youcef, Prof. A. Neddar, and Dr. F. Benaghrouzi whose generous teaching and
kindness are unrelatable.
Special thanks go to my friends and colleagues namely; Ms. A. Ghorieb, Mr. M.
Tandjaoui, Ms. R. Benyoucef, Ms. A. Berkani, Prof. Benichou, Prof. Brahim, Prof.
Bennaceur, Prof. Kada, Dr. Makroum, Dr. Hattab, Ms. F Messaoudi, Prof. Bendahen, Prof.
Benaicha, Dr. Benamar, Prof. Yayouch, Dr. Hifri, Dr. Djemai, and Dr. Debladji, all of
whom have always been of a huge moral and intellectual support.
Undeniable recognition is also given and conveyed to the support of all my
colleagues of the department of Arabic Letters of Mostaganem University; the department
I belong to and without whose peaceful and intellectual environment, I would not have
gained more knowledge and more serenity for the completion of this thesis. Similar thanks
also go to my colleagues and friends from the Department of Fine Arts of Mostaganem
University. Let them all find here the expression of my sincere gratitude.
Mostaganem, March 2018
ii
Abstract
This research work addresses the commandment of the postmodern condition in
relatedness to English postmodern fiction taking Julian. P. Barnes (1946- ); one of
contemporary Britain’s most brilliant and sophisticated novelists as one of its
representatives. The perspectives that this thesis is based upon are matters within the scope
of Existentialism, Agnosticism, and Englishness; i.e., the sense of English identity, in such
an entangled hyper-modern age. Barnes is one of the quintessential authors in English
literature with a postmodernist fictional tendency, and whose works are within a multitude
of narrative genres/discourses, distinguished in his ‘fine wisdom’ displayed in a multitude
of narrative modes - which makes of him an articulate ‘chameleon of British letters’ - with
his diligent use of irony, and an elaborate language use of both English and French, he is a
writer who always pushes arguments through to their rational conclusions. Indeed, Barnes
forms his characters with an existential quest which resorts to a tendency of self-reflexivity
through which the characters contemplate certain complicated matters with unresolved
conclusions such as, the notion and manacles of time, mortality, and the utility as well as
the usability of art in contrast to the hyper-modernist age, other revaluations also target the
validity and revision of the authenticity of historical truthfulness, love, the coexistence of
religion, and the belief in God in such a neo-Darwinian spirit/time. Yet, the basic and most
recurrent theme that characterises Barnes’s authorial tendency is the constant quest for an
existential meaningfulness with almost a cry out for the belief in religion and God as
Matthew Pateman (2002) suggests; that Barnes’s novelistic characters are striving for some
way of finding meaning in an increasingly depoliticized, secularized, localized, and
depthless world. This research relies on the selection of four works of Barnes’s; England,
England (1998), The Lemon Table (2004), Arthur & George (2005), and Nothing to be
Frightened of (2008), all of which form the pillar of this work for the ability to unite and
justify the recurrent themes that the author relentlessly retrieves in relation to postmodern
concerns, mostly the loss of a sense of belief in God as well as of any form of
spiritual/religious pertinence as a consequence of the advents of modernity which have
ushered to what I term; existential nausea. These aspects, highly evoked in Barnes’s works
might lead to their categorization under postmodern existential fiction. This research also
endeavours to foster, on the one hand, Barnes’s fiction as a reflection of the postmodern
zeitgeist, and on the other, it mirrors the author’s and the postmodern Man’s anxieties vis-
à-vis the post-Darwinian hyper-modern age.
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Contents
Dedication ...……………………………………………………………………………… i
Acknowledgements ...……………………………………………………………………. ii
Abstract ………..…………………………………………………………………….…... iii
Contents ………………………………………………………………………………...... iv
General Introduction …………...……………………………………………………..... 1
Chapter One: Postmodernism, the Demise of Modernity and Existentialism ………12
1.1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………........ 14
1.2. The Demise of Modernity and the Distrust of the Enlightenment ………………... 15
1.2.1. Age of Enlightenment – Beginning of Modernization Process……………….......15
1.2.2. Disillusionment towards the Enlightenment Optimistic Promises………………. 25
1.3. Postmodernism and Postmodern Fiction ………………………………………… 34
1.4. Existentialism and Modernism ………………………………………………........ 43
1.4.1. TheSearch for the Meaningfulness of Being …………………………………… 50
1.4.2. Anxiety and Authenticity ………………………………………………………. 53
1.4.2.1.Anxiety …………………………………………………………………………. 53
1.4.2.2.Authenticity …………………………………………………………………...... 56
1.4.3. Absurdity…………….………………………………………………………..... 58
1.5. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………...…. 60
Chapter Two: Julian Barnes and Postmodern Fiction ……..…………………...….. 64
2.1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………......… 66
iv
2.2. Introducing Julian Barnes ……………………………………………………...... 68
2.3. Barnes’s Postmodern Existential Fiction …………………………………..….. 72
2.4. Postmodern Fiction and the Barnesian Literary Style ………………….…......... 78
2.5. The Interrelation of Historical Theory and Literary Technicalities in the
Postmodern Novel -Barnes’s Arthur and George (2005) …………………………....... 84
2.6. Barnes and thePostmodern Historical Representation within Fictional Narrative 86
2.7. Historiographic Metafiction in Barnes’s Arthur & George (2005)……….…... 89
2.8. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………...……... 102
Chapter Three: Agnosticism and Existentialism in Barnes’s Nothing to be Frightened
of(2008)and The Lemon Table(2004)…………………………………………….... 105
3.1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………...107
3.2. On Agnosticism ……………………………………………………………….........108
3.3. Agnosticism in Barnes’s Nothing to be Frightened of (2008)…………………….. 111
3.4. Existentialism in Barnes’s The Lemon Table(2004)……………………………... 132
3.4.1. The Search for the Meaningfulness and Authenticity of Being in Barnes’s The
Lemon Table(2004)...……………………………………………………………….... 139
3.4.2.Absurdity in Barnes’s The Lemon Table(2004)…………………………………146
3.4.3. The Notion of Death in Barnes’s The Lemon Table (2004)………………………149
3.5. Existentialism and the Problem of Truth and Historiography in Barnes’s The Lemon
Table(2004)…………………………………………………………………………… 155
3.6. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….160
Chapter Four: Englishness and Existentialism in Barnes’s England, England (1998)
and Arthur & George(2005)……………………………………………………..........164
4.1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………….… 166
v
4.2. Eschatology in Barnes’s Existential Articulation of the Absence of Spirituality in
English Society…………………………………………………………………….…... 166
4.3. Englishness and Dehumanization in Barnes’s Arthur & George (2005) ……….….175
4.4. Englishness and English Racism in Barnes’s England, England (1998) and Arthur &
George(2005)………………………………………………………………………… 178
4.5. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….….. 194
General Conclusion ……………………………………………………………..…… 196
Bibliography ………………………………………………………………….....…...... 209
vi
General Introduction
Contemporary Western societies on the general boardG anedn tehre aEln Ignlisthr oind puarctitciuolanr
have witnessed a liberal tendency of a soaring disinterest in the belief in a spiritual/theistic
deity, as well as the disconsolation of religion’s coexistence with the ‘frenetic materialism’
from the advents of the previous modern; empirical and rational ideologies. The latter are
implied in the strong belief in rationality, scientifically-based truths and knowledge, as
well as on the hold on the Darwinian evolutionist theory to the detriment of the creation of
the universe. Similarly, the belief in the fact that science is the key to the explanation of the
phenomenal world; for control and mastery of it, the tenets of which were built in
throughout the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment; seventeenth and eighteenth
century respectively, and the criteria of which are rationalism and empiricism, as the only
source for a tangible certainty of authenticity and world order, is now brought under
revaluation.
This humble thesis attempts to have a philosophical/ideological approach of
literature; the novel in particular, and in this case, the choice is upon Barnes’s fiction and
how it reflects the postmodern zeitgeist. The endeavour, here, regards the novel as a
means, amongst other means, of expression and reportedness upon the socio-historical
state.
Barnes uses - in his Nothing to be Frightened of (2008) - Emile Littré’s stance upon
the complicatedness of the human nature and the extent of which is parallel to the
complicatedness of his/her environment. Such a speculative note that denounces the sense
of alienation the modern/hypermodern Man experiences, i.e., a sense of estrangement; loss,
and constant wonderings upon the meaningfulness of Being in such an entangled period.
This is found in the nature of the human being who expresses his/her existence in both an
empirical, pragmatic sense as well as the need for that spiritual/transcendental unscientific
belief in a deity or both of the deity and the Holy Scriptures for another hidden satisfaction
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