Julian Barnes’ <i>England, England</i>: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia

Majid Sadeghzadegan

doi:doi:10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16

Research Article |

| Peer-Reviewed

Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia

Majid Sadeghzadegan^*

Published in English Language, Literature & Culture (Volume 9, Issue 4)

Received: 17 April 2024 Accepted: 12 June 2024 Published: 23 September 2024

Views: Downloads:

Download PDF

Share This Article

Twitter
Linked In
Facebook

Abstract

Julian Barnes’ England, England lends itself to many types of critical readings as it garners many concepts and themes as diverse as identity, memory, history, nationality, rise and fall of a nation, and individual crises. All these are incorporated satirically, if not farcically, into the life a Martha Cochrane whose life milestones run in tandem with the three parts of the novel, which nostalgically cite how a nation’s glory ebbs away gradually. The present paper sets out to explore England, England in particular dimensions in order to come to better terms with its embedded themes, especially Englishness and English identity. With an esoteric literary aura and a resolute voice in portraying Englishness, its memory and the aesthetics thereof, the novel seeks to illuminate many hidden codes and messages in the guise of humor and satire. To unravel such encryptions, one needs to decipher them initially through an investigation of postmodernist elements and staples, such as paradoxes, simulacrum and parody, which constitute the most compelling plank of the thematic contents of the novel. Along this path, prominent names such as Linda Hutcheon and Baudrillard will emerge whose theoretical implications will be high on the critical agenda of the paper. On a different note, England, England, as a distinctly dystopian work, happens to equally send strongly nostalgic messages regarding the concepts of Englishness, past, present, and their memory through the portrayal of a dystopian wasteland. The ending portion of the paper will endeavour to shed light on how Barnes deploys such dystopian air and poetics to embellish his work further concerning Englishness. Ultimately, the papers will infer that the fall of grand narratives such as Englishness, identity, and memory is what it takes for a nation to rebuild and re-invent its identity.

Published in	English Language, Literature & Culture (Volume 9, Issue 4) This article belongs to the Special Issue Memory and Counter-memory in Postmodern British Fiction
DOI	10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16
Page(s)	138-149
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Postmodernism, Paradox, Simulacrum, Parody, Dystopia, Identity, Memory

References

[1]	Abrams, M. H, and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.
[2]	Barnes, Julian. England, England. New York: Vintage, 2000. EPUB.
[3]	Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. First Edition, 17th Printing edition. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Print.
[4]	Baudrillard, Jean. ‘Simulacra and Simulations’, in Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster. Cambridge: Polity. 1988. Print.
[5]	Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory. Pearson Education, 2004. Print.
[6]	Bentley, Nick. Contemporary British Fiction. 1 edition. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Print.
[7]	Booker, M. Keith. Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1994. Print.
[8]	Booker, M. Keith. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social Criticism. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1994. Print.
[9]	Brown, David Jay. Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse: Contemplating the Future with Noam Chomsky, George Carlin, Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake, and Others. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005. Print
[10]	Childs, Peter. Julian Barnes. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2011. Print.
[11]	Day, Sara K., Miranda A. Green-Barteet, and Amy L. Montz, eds. Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction. Reprint edition. S. l.: Routledge, 2016. Print.
[12]	Freiburg, Rudolf, ‘“Novels come out of life, not out of theory”: an Interview with Julian Barnes’, in Rudolf Freiburg and Jan Schnitker (eds), ‘Do you consider yourself a postmodern author?’ Interviews with Contemporary English Writers (Reihe: Erlanger Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, vol. 1, 1999), pp. 39–66.
[13]	Gordin, Michael D., Helen Tilley, and Gyan Prakash, eds. Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility. Princeton, N. J: Princeton University Press, 2010. Print.
[14]	Guignery, Vanessa, and Ryan Roberts, eds. Conversations with Julian Barnes. First Edition edition. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Print.
[15]	Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Reissue edition. Cambridge Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print.
[16]	Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988. Print.
[17]	Hutcheon, Linda. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. London; New York: Routledge, 1995. Print.
[18]	Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992. Print.
[19]	Lyotard, Jean-Francois, and Fredric Jameson. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. 1st edition. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1984. Print.
[20]	Marr, Andrew, ‘He’s Turned towards Python’, Observer (30 August 1998), Review section.
[21]	McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. London: Methuen, Inc., 1987.
[22]	Miracky, James J., ‘Replicating a Dinosaur: Authenticity Runs Amok in the “Theme Parking” of Michael Crighton’s Jurassic Park and Julian Barnes’s England, England’, Critique, (Winter 2004).
[23]	Moseley, Merritt. Understanding Julian Barnes. 13th ed. edition. Columbia (S. C.): University of South Carolina Press, 2009. Print.
[24]	Nünning, Vera. “The Invention of Cultural Traditions: The Construction and Deconstruction of Englishness and Authenticity in Julian Barnes’ England England.” Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie 119.1(2007). DeGruyter. Web.
[25]	Parrinder Patrick, ‘The Ruined Futures of British Science Fiction’, in Zachary Leader (ed.), On Modern British Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
[26]	Pateman, Matthew, Julian Barnes (Tavistock: Northcote House, Writers and their Work, 2002). (Perceptive analysis of all Barnes’s novels up to Love, etc.)
[27]	Bradford, Richard. “Julian Barnes’s England, England and Englishness”. Roberts, Ryan et al. Julian Barnes: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Ed. Sebastian Groes and Peter Childs. 1 edition. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. Print.
[28]	Smith, Leslie. Modern British Farce: A Selective Study of British Farce from Pinero to the Present Day. 1st ed. 1989 edition. Place of publication not identified: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print.

Cite This Article

Plain Text BibTeX RIS

APA Style

Sadeghzadegan, M. (2024). Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia. English Language, Literature & Culture, 9(4), 138-149. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16

Copy | Download

ACS Style

Sadeghzadegan, M. Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia. Engl. Lang. Lit. Cult. 2024, 9(4), 138-149. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16

Copy | Download

AMA Style

Sadeghzadegan M. Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia. Engl Lang Lit Cult. 2024;9(4):138-149. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16

Copy | Download

@article{10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16,
  author = {Majid Sadeghzadegan},
  title = {Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia
},
  journal = {English Language, Literature & Culture},
  volume = {9},
  number = {4},
  pages = {138-149},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ellc.20240904.16},
  abstract = {Julian Barnes’ England, England lends itself to many types of critical readings as it garners many concepts and themes as diverse as identity, memory, history, nationality, rise and fall of a nation, and individual crises. All these are incorporated satirically, if not farcically, into the life a Martha Cochrane whose life milestones run in tandem with the three parts of the novel, which nostalgically cite how a nation’s glory ebbs away gradually. The present paper sets out to explore England, England in particular dimensions in order to come to better terms with its embedded themes, especially Englishness and English identity. With an esoteric literary aura and a resolute voice in portraying Englishness, its memory and the aesthetics thereof, the novel seeks to illuminate many hidden codes and messages in the guise of humor and satire. To unravel such encryptions, one needs to decipher them initially through an investigation of postmodernist elements and staples, such as paradoxes, simulacrum and parody, which constitute the most compelling plank of the thematic contents of the novel. Along this path, prominent names such as Linda Hutcheon and Baudrillard will emerge whose theoretical implications will be high on the critical agenda of the paper. On a different note, England, England, as a distinctly dystopian work, happens to equally send strongly nostalgic messages regarding the concepts of Englishness, past, present, and their memory through the portrayal of a dystopian wasteland. The ending portion of the paper will endeavour to shed light on how Barnes deploys such dystopian air and poetics to embellish his work further concerning Englishness. Ultimately, the papers will infer that the fall of grand narratives such as Englishness, identity, and memory is what it takes for a nation to rebuild and re-invent its identity.
},
 year = {2024}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia

AU  - Majid Sadeghzadegan
Y1  - 2024/09/23
PY  - 2024
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16
DO  - 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16
T2  - English Language, Literature & Culture
JF  - English Language, Literature & Culture
JO  - English Language, Literature & Culture
SP  - 138
EP  - 149
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2575-2413
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16
AB  - Julian Barnes’ England, England lends itself to many types of critical readings as it garners many concepts and themes as diverse as identity, memory, history, nationality, rise and fall of a nation, and individual crises. All these are incorporated satirically, if not farcically, into the life a Martha Cochrane whose life milestones run in tandem with the three parts of the novel, which nostalgically cite how a nation’s glory ebbs away gradually. The present paper sets out to explore England, England in particular dimensions in order to come to better terms with its embedded themes, especially Englishness and English identity. With an esoteric literary aura and a resolute voice in portraying Englishness, its memory and the aesthetics thereof, the novel seeks to illuminate many hidden codes and messages in the guise of humor and satire. To unravel such encryptions, one needs to decipher them initially through an investigation of postmodernist elements and staples, such as paradoxes, simulacrum and parody, which constitute the most compelling plank of the thematic contents of the novel. Along this path, prominent names such as Linda Hutcheon and Baudrillard will emerge whose theoretical implications will be high on the critical agenda of the paper. On a different note, England, England, as a distinctly dystopian work, happens to equally send strongly nostalgic messages regarding the concepts of Englishness, past, present, and their memory through the portrayal of a dystopian wasteland. The ending portion of the paper will endeavour to shed light on how Barnes deploys such dystopian air and poetics to embellish his work further concerning Englishness. Ultimately, the papers will infer that the fall of grand narratives such as Englishness, identity, and memory is what it takes for a nation to rebuild and re-invent its identity.

VL  - 9
IS  - 4
ER  -

Copy | Download

Author Information

Majid Sadeghzadegan

English Literature Department, Tabriz Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

Contact Email

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5683-5862

Download PDF

Sections

Plain Text BibTeX RIS

APA Style

Sadeghzadegan, M. (2024). Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia. English Language, Literature & Culture, 9(4), 138-149. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16

Copy | Download

ACS Style

Sadeghzadegan, M. Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia. Engl. Lang. Lit. Cult. 2024, 9(4), 138-149. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16

Copy | Download

AMA Style

Sadeghzadegan M. Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia. Engl Lang Lit Cult. 2024;9(4):138-149. doi: 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16

Copy | Download

@article{10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16,
  author = {Majid Sadeghzadegan},
  title = {Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia
},
  journal = {English Language, Literature & Culture},
  volume = {9},
  number = {4},
  pages = {138-149},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ellc.20240904.16},
  abstract = {Julian Barnes’ England, England lends itself to many types of critical readings as it garners many concepts and themes as diverse as identity, memory, history, nationality, rise and fall of a nation, and individual crises. All these are incorporated satirically, if not farcically, into the life a Martha Cochrane whose life milestones run in tandem with the three parts of the novel, which nostalgically cite how a nation’s glory ebbs away gradually. The present paper sets out to explore England, England in particular dimensions in order to come to better terms with its embedded themes, especially Englishness and English identity. With an esoteric literary aura and a resolute voice in portraying Englishness, its memory and the aesthetics thereof, the novel seeks to illuminate many hidden codes and messages in the guise of humor and satire. To unravel such encryptions, one needs to decipher them initially through an investigation of postmodernist elements and staples, such as paradoxes, simulacrum and parody, which constitute the most compelling plank of the thematic contents of the novel. Along this path, prominent names such as Linda Hutcheon and Baudrillard will emerge whose theoretical implications will be high on the critical agenda of the paper. On a different note, England, England, as a distinctly dystopian work, happens to equally send strongly nostalgic messages regarding the concepts of Englishness, past, present, and their memory through the portrayal of a dystopian wasteland. The ending portion of the paper will endeavour to shed light on how Barnes deploys such dystopian air and poetics to embellish his work further concerning Englishness. Ultimately, the papers will infer that the fall of grand narratives such as Englishness, identity, and memory is what it takes for a nation to rebuild and re-invent its identity.
},
 year = {2024}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - Julian Barnes’ England, England: Beyond Postmodernism and Dystopia

AU  - Majid Sadeghzadegan
Y1  - 2024/09/23
PY  - 2024
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16
DO  - 10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16
T2  - English Language, Literature & Culture
JF  - English Language, Literature & Culture
JO  - English Language, Literature & Culture
SP  - 138
EP  - 149
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2575-2413
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ellc.20240904.16
AB  - Julian Barnes’ England, England lends itself to many types of critical readings as it garners many concepts and themes as diverse as identity, memory, history, nationality, rise and fall of a nation, and individual crises. All these are incorporated satirically, if not farcically, into the life a Martha Cochrane whose life milestones run in tandem with the three parts of the novel, which nostalgically cite how a nation’s glory ebbs away gradually. The present paper sets out to explore England, England in particular dimensions in order to come to better terms with its embedded themes, especially Englishness and English identity. With an esoteric literary aura and a resolute voice in portraying Englishness, its memory and the aesthetics thereof, the novel seeks to illuminate many hidden codes and messages in the guise of humor and satire. To unravel such encryptions, one needs to decipher them initially through an investigation of postmodernist elements and staples, such as paradoxes, simulacrum and parody, which constitute the most compelling plank of the thematic contents of the novel. Along this path, prominent names such as Linda Hutcheon and Baudrillard will emerge whose theoretical implications will be high on the critical agenda of the paper. On a different note, England, England, as a distinctly dystopian work, happens to equally send strongly nostalgic messages regarding the concepts of Englishness, past, present, and their memory through the portrayal of a dystopian wasteland. The ending portion of the paper will endeavour to shed light on how Barnes deploys such dystopian air and poetics to embellish his work further concerning Englishness. Ultimately, the papers will infer that the fall of grand narratives such as Englishness, identity, and memory is what it takes for a nation to rebuild and re-invent its identity.

VL  - 9
IS  - 4
ER  -

Copy | Download