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National Identity and Authenticity in Julian Barnes' England, England

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National Identity and Authenticity in Julian Barnes' England, England Abschlussarbeit zur Erlangung der Magistra Artium im Fachbereich 10 Neuere Philologien der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Institut für England- und Amerikastudien Thema: (Re-) Creating the Past: National Identity and Authenticity in Julian Barnes’ England, England and Brian Moore’s The Great Victorian Collection. 1. Gutachterin: Prof. Dr. Susanne Scholz 2. Gutachterin: Dr. Gisela Engel vorgelegt von: Ulrike Christina Mättner aus: Darmstadt Einreichungsdatum: 20.6.2008 1 Contents Contents ......................................................................................................................... 1 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 2 1.1 Introduction to The Great Victorian Collection ............................................... 3 1.2 Introduction to England, England .................................................................... 6 2. The Postmodern Condition ...................................................................................... 10 2.1 Focus on fragmentation ................................................................................. 11 2.2 Epistemological doubt .................................................................................. 13 2.3 Decentring of the subject ............................................................................. 16 2.4 Decline of nationalism ................................................................................... 20 ............................................................................................................................ 20 2.5 Local culture .................................................................................................. 24 2.6 Authenticity .................................................................................................... 26 2.7 Consumer capitalism ...................................................................................... 28 3. Nostalgia .................................................................................................................. 31 3.1 Definition ...................................................................................................... 31 3.2 Home in the past ............................................................................................ 32 3.3 Wholeness ...................................................................................................... 34 3.4 Grand narratives ............................................................................................ 38 3.5 Belonging ....................................................................................................... 39 3.6 Being out of place ......................................................................................... 40 3.7 Identification .................................................................................................. 41 4. National Identity ..................................................................................................... 43 4.1 English National Identity ............................................................................... 44 4.2 History ........................................................................................................... 47 5. (Re-)Creating the Past .............................................................................................. 53 5.1 Memory .......................................................................................................... 53 5.2 The national past ........................................................................................... 59 5.2.1 Museums ......................................................................................................... 60 5.2.2 Heritage ........................................................................................................... 62 6. Authenticity and Creation ........................................................................................ 66 6.1 Original and replica ....................................................................................... 67 6.2 Marketing and tourism ................................................................................... 74 6.3 Authentic Englishness .................................................................................... 79 7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 82 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 84 Zusammenfassung ....................................................................................................... 86 2 1. Introduction The end of the twentieth century was marked by political developments that challenged traditional national identities. In Europe, the break-up of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries reinforced a move towards regionalism with an emphasis on local culture. At the same time, the growing importance of globalised markets and the necessary mobility of the population demanded the redefinition of national identities along inclusive multicultural lines. Contemporary writing reflects and expounds the problems of these changes. An important concern in postmodernist British novels is thus the discussion of national identity, questioning historical truths with an interest in the crossing of boundaries between history and myth, and between the authentic and the imitation. National identities are perceived as no longer stable, collective identities, but instead as flexible and fragmented. Thus, contemporary writing that discusses national identity is often characterised by a sense of loss and uncertainty. Julian Barnes discusses notions of Englishness in his novel England, England (1998). He describes two possible consequences to the prevailing nostalgic idea that true Englishness only existed in an idealised imperial past, and that it cannot be lived within a European framework. As one example, Barnes explores the renunciation of the technological development that significantly changed the world in the twentieth century. He delineates the attempt of taking a step back in time, embracing cultural regression. As another possible consequence to the belief that true Englishness only existed in the past, Barnes explores the construction of a theme park which preserves and represents everything distinctively English. This theme park capitalises the nostalgic longing for an idealised past, where the distinction between authenticated history and myth or fiction is unimportant. In The Great Victorian Collection (1975), Brian Moore discusses the relation between the real and the replica, and the possibility of an indistinguishability between original and copy. Brian Moore, too, describes the construction of a theme park which makes profit from a nostalgia for the past. This essay will explore the fundamental conditions for the reluctance and resistance to contemporary changes, which result in a glorification of the past. 3 The first chapter will explain the ‘postmodern condition’, as Jean-François Lyotard termed it. Although notions of ‘postmodernism’ are highly debated, it will be used here in the sense that it describes the contemporary focus on fragmentation, the decentring of the subject and the scrutiny of grand narratives. The essay will show that the emphasis on fragmentation and epistemological doubt causes a collective longing for an idealised past. The second chapter explores the feeling of nostalgia for a ‘home in the past’, when individuals allegedly felt ‘whole’ and led satisfied lives in stable communities. Notions of ‘Englishness’ rely heavily on this kind of shared imagination of an idealised past. This essay will explore English national identity in terms of its constructedness on the basis of a shared nostalgic image of the past. In this context, notions of authenticity will be discussed in relation to the phenomenon of hyper real theme parks. 1.1 Introduction to The Great Victorian Collection In his novel The Great Victorian Collection (1975) the author Brian Moore tells the story of Anthony Maloney, a twenty-nine year old assistant professor of history at McGill University in Montreal, whose dream comes to life. Maloney, after attending a seminar at Berkeley, intends to spend the weekend exploring the Big Sur region, and checks into the Sea Winds Motel in Carmel-by-the- Sea, California.That night in the motel, he dreams that outside his window, on a previously empty parking-lot, an open-air market has appeared, containing a unique collection of priceless Victoriana. This is not an extraordinary dream for Maloney, he had once, in his graduate student days, thought of creating a collection such as this in Canada, but had been advised that such a project would be futile and impractical. The next morning when he wakes up, he finds his dream come true. Laid out before him he sees a vast array of exquisite furniture, paintings, jewellery, tapestries and musical instruments. The Collection includes artefacts which exist in British museums, but also exhibits objects which are nowadays only known from descriptions and illustrations in books. 4 The Great Victorian Collection is a fantastic, surreal novel, that plays with postmodern questions of reality and authenticity. Anthony Maloney’s dream of the Collection miraculously comes to life in those duplicates of original Victoriana. He is confident
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