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Corso di Laurea magistrale in Lingue e Letterature Europee, Americane e Postcoloniali Tesi di Laurea A New Self, History, and Truth The Postmodern Quest in Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, and Arthur & George Relatore Ch. Prof. Flavio Gregori Correlatore Ch. Prof. Shaul Bassi Laureanda Giulia Pavan Matricola 822433 Anno Accademico 2012 / 2013 1 To my mother and Francesca, for their patience 2 CONTENTS PART I 1. Introduction: Postmodernity as the age of Nihilism? 6 2. Postmodernism and Postmodernity 9 3. A new conception of Self 17 4. A new conception of History 23 5. A new conception of Truth 40 PART II 6. Julian Barnes: an overview 55 7. Parody of biography: reconstructing Flaubert through his parrot 60 7.1 Structure and themes 61 7.2 Flaubert and Barnes 65 7.3 Parroting academic biographies 76 8. Parody of historiography: reconstructing a history of the world in 10 ½ chapters 97 8.1. A polyphonic re-writing of history 102 8.2. The pattern of the novel and the pattern of history 127 8.3. Historiographic metafiction as parodic historiography 137 9. Parody of the trial: reconstructing a plurality of truths 147 9.1. History and biography writing as new forms of detection 152 9.2. Conclusion: a belief in objective truth as a way out of nihilism 165 BIBLIOGRAPHY 3 4 PART I 5 1. INTRODUCTION: POSTMODERNITY AS THE AGE OF NIHILISM? There are no facts, only interpretations. (Friedrich W. Nietzsche) Many scholars, belonging to the most disparate schools of thought, have felt that we are now standing at the end of the modern era. Postmodernity, meant as a historical period, has to be distinguished from postmodernism, which is instead a current of thought. In order to deeply understand postmodernism, it is therefore necessary to analyse the cultural background that originated it. The epochal transformation which has led to Postmodernity does not exclusively concern economical and socio-political changes, such as capitalism and mass society, but entails a drastic modification of the very conceptions of the Self, of History, and of the knowledge of Truth, which were formulated during Modernity. Areas of knowledge of humanistic disciplines that used to be clearly separated, such as philosophy, historiography, and literary critics, now overlap and blur. A telling example is Hayden White’s Metahistory (1973), in which literary concepts such as ‘emplotment’ and ‘tropes’ are applied to historiography: history is conceived as a linguistic construction which cannot avoid a certain degree of contamination with fiction. The status of history as an objective science is therefore challenged, as the result of a broader questioning which involves the very concept of “objective knowledge” elaborated during Modernity. As Richard Palmer (1977: 363) observes, ‘the revolt against positivism is gaining ground in psychology, sociology, political science, philosophy, and other disciplines. In literature, there is the rejection of tradition, of coherence and rationality, of nameability.’ Literature has translated these cultural changes into its own terms, which are roughly assembled under the umbrella-term ‘postmodernism’. Indeed, almost every scholar has a different and personal conception of what “postmodernism” is, according to their own sensibilities and areas of interest. One of 6 the main issues that hinder the formulation of a stable and shared definition of this term is its interdisciplinary character. Indeed, the term “postmodern” has now gained wide, albeit often improper, usage. It has been applied to architecture, literature, music, painting, dance, urban planning, photography, and ‘cultural tendencies of every kind’ (Hassan, 1981: 31). The “use and abuse” of the same label for such disparate forms of artistic expression is revelatory of a new shared concern, which is this new change in consciousness which characterizes postmodernity as a new historical era Postmodernism in literature should not be considered exclusively in terms of rhetorical devices or literary styles, but rather as a ‘representational strategy, a hermeneutical attitude’ (Ceserani, 1997: 136). This observation does not mean that there are no recurrent rhetorical devices or styles; there are indeed a certain amount of recurrent features that allows critics to label novels as postmodernist, but such techniques have already been used in the past. What is relevant and new, therefore, is not the rhetoric device in sé, but the ultimate purpose of its employment. The most relevant changes in culture that have had notable repercussions on literature concern the conception of the Self, of History, and of the knowledge of Truth. Starting with Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, and through Hans- Georg Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, postmodernity and postmodernism can be seen as having led to the end of ‘master narratives’ (Lyotard, 1978), since unifying and official narratives are no longer believed and believable. The consequence is a fragmentation of the Self, a subjective conception of History, and an arbitrary conception of Truth. The specter that is haunting Europe – and America – is no longer Communism, dismissed as a master-narrative, but Nihilism. This philosophical and cultural background will be described in Part I. Part II, instead, will be articulated in three chapters, each of them analysing a different novel from the English author Julian Barnes. The theoretical issues risen in Part I will be paralleled in the novelistic practice of Part II. The first novel analysed, Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), can be conceived as a parody of a traditional biography, as many of the epistemological doubts and uncertainties risen by postmodernism are actualized in this re-writing of Flaubert’s life. It reflects a new conception of Self. A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989), instead, parodies conventional 7 historiography. The new conception of history likens the writing of the past to the creation of any artificial linguistic construct. The last novel analysed, Arthur & George (2005), is a detective fiction and a historical novel, since it is about the real case against George Edalji, reputed innocent by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who decides to investigate. The quest for truth, however, proves an impossible task, and the mystery remains unsolved. The conclusion of my thesis is that, although postmodernism bears within itself a tendency towards nihilism, this cultural phenomenon can ultimately be considered positive, inasmuch as it rises an awareness in the impossibility of gaining a complete and objective knowledge of the world, the past, or even ourselves. We are left with a plurality of limited, partial, and subjective truths which created a polyphony of voices among which it is easy to discern only chaos and confusion. However, postmodernism rejects the monological and authoritative Truth, embracing instead many versions of the truth, equally worth of being listened to. While Nihilism means that nothing can be known, postmodern pluralism implies that it is possible to know more, not less, and that it is possible to make a truly aware choice about what to believe in. The recognition of a plurality of truths is the fundamental pre-requisite of tolerance. 8 2. POSTMODERNISM AND POSTMODERNITY The modern age seems to have now ended, and this is proved by the fact that the new postmodern culture bases its identity on the difference with Modernity, while postmodernism is defined through oppositions to modernism. Indeed, its identity is chiefly based on negating or opposing certain features generally associated with Modernity. However, every attempt of historical periodization is, for its very nature, arbitrary and generalizing. Only with hindsight is it possible to interpret the past, bridging the gaps and drawing connections between diverse events. Labels as “Modernity” and “Postmodernity” are just useful tools, necessary to put order in the otherwise chaotic narration of history-as-events. Hassan indeed observes that ‘[m]odernism and postmodernism are not separated by an Iron Curtain or Chinese Wall, for history is a palimpsest, and culture is permeable to time past, time present, and time future’ (1981: 32). This process of labelling is even more complex nowadays, since there is the perception that ‘such a compact and coherent thing as an “age”, a Zeigeist, a “system”, a “current situation” no longer exists’ (Jameson in Ceserani, 1997: 104). The mistake scholars are more likely to make is to reduce postmodernism in art and literature merely to a certain poetics or style rather than regarding it as a cultural phenomenon which is often confounded with postmodernity (Ceserani, 1997: 28). In his analysis, Remo Ceserani traces the turning point from Modernity to Postmodernity back in the post-war 1950s, although the effects of this epochal change started being felt only during the 1980s, under the shape of concrete and symbolic events, such as Cernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, and mass migrations from Africa (1997: 9). The changes that took place in the 1950s involved the deep structures of our world, our ways of thinking and communicating, and our very consciousness, which led Pier Paolo Pasolini to talk about an ‘anthropological revolution’ (in Ceserani, 1997: 10-15). Ceserani compares this shift form modernity to postmodernity to the great transformations that took place in Europe between the 18th and the 19th century due to the Industrial Revolution, the political revolutions, which led to a drastic change in

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