‘Fabulation’ of metanarratives in julian barnes’s novels metroland, flaubert’s parrot, a history of the world in 10 ½ chapters, and england, England

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2009

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Salman, Volhan

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The present thesis argues that the present era of post-postmodernism experiences a revival of revised metanarratives through ‘fabulation’, the process masterfully depicted in Julian Barnes’s novels Metroland (1980), Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989) and England, England (1998). The age of postmodernism with its undermining irony, hopelessness, pessimism and the sense of the looming end could not but leave the world in a state of despair, characterised by a propagated rule of the simulacra and the subaltern, hybridism, uncertainty, absence and inconclusiveness. As a result, the world witnessed the appearance of various calls for the re-institution of metanarratives as the only cure to rescue mankind from continuous deferral of signification, which tends to feel secure only with a score of guiding narratives. The same holds true of Julian Barnes’s fiction. While many consider the writer’s works to be typically postmodern, it is far from being so, as alongside the propagation of multiplicity and flexibility of meaning, it emphasises the existence of the Truth and the necessity to fabulate metanarratives, which are the only guiding poles in human progress through life in post-postmodernism.

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English literature.

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http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12610310/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/18384

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

V. Salman, “‘Fabulation’ of metanarratives in julian barnes’s novels metroland, flaubert’s parrot, a history of the world in 10 ½ chapters, and england, England,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2009.