in 10 ½ Chapters (henceforth referred to as A History). Subsequently, I will then examine its implications on the pursuit of meaning and its metamorphoses - the search for religion, art and love - and investigate how they are used as means against the cruelty of history.

2. BARNES AND THE POSTMODERN CRISIS OF MEANING

In the following part of my paper I will examine important notions of postmodern fiction and the work of Julian Barnes. As one of those British writers who are eager to challenge the limits of literary genres and conventions, Barnes is often considered “a thoroughgoing postmodernist” (Moseley 1997: 15). But what exactly is “postmodernism” and how does it influence contemporary writers like Julian Barnes?

Even though the term „postmodern‟ has become part of everyday speech most of the people (ab)using it can not say what it really means (cf. Sim 2005: vii). The lack of a clear definition ironically proves the fact that in terms of postmodernism solid meanings and fixed patterns of reference have been dispersed. Postmodern writers seem to possess a distinctive sense of chaos perceiving that “virtually everything and everyone exists in […] a radical state of distortion and aberration” (Lewis 2005: 111). Denying universal cultural values and all kinds of artistic, social, political or aesthetical certainties, they adhere to a deep-rooted disbelief in the existence of an ultimate truth. With this comes a great scepticism towards „the‟ reality and its representation through art, especially in terms of the so called “grand narrative” (Wakefield 1990: 22), a literary concept that served to legitimize grand humanistic projects within broader epistemological contexts and meta-discourses (ibid.). Functioning as filters for what was handed down through the centuries, grand narratives or metanarratives defined historic realities and dominated the intellectual history of the modern era dating from the Enlightenment. By rejecting this modernist tradition, the postmodernists give evidence to the belief that there is no absolute truth in need of legitimization and “that what we accept as reality is already simulated, a massive fabrication of effects that stand in for reality‟s absence” (ibid.: 33). While most modernists aim at the transgression of disorder and chaos striving for “all of which was thought of as leading to a truly emancipated society” (ibid.: 23), postmodernists mainly adhere to the notion of meaninglessness. The crisis of representation and legitimization consequently presents itself as a crisis of meaning.

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Naturally, these philosophical principles find expression in structures and textures of postmodern writings. Many of these works reach beyond older literary conventions by “stressing discontinuity, allegory, the mechanical, the gap between signifier and signified, the lapse in meaning, the syncope in the experience of the subject” (ibid.: 30). As poststructuralist texts they share a certain degree of (self-) reflexivity pointing out to their own “facetiousness as textual constructs” (Stam 1985: 3) and parodic intertextuality. According to that, postmodern writings are characterized by textual strategies and structures which reflect their own artifice in terms of temporal disorder, contextualization, discontinuity, fragmentation, looseness and the alienation of authorship. Thereby, the idea of coherent patterns of meanings and stable references - such as religion or art - are revealed to be illusionary. “Thus, „not truth, but whose truth‟, becomes the central credo of postmodernist fiction” (Sesto 2001: 8).

Against the backdrop of these thoughts, it seems not far-fetched to place the works of Julian Barnes within a postmodern context - for diverse reasons. First of all, his publications lie in the time span between 1960 and 1990 which can “be regarded as postmodernist” (Lewis 2005: 112). Secondly, Barnes seems to stick to poststructuralist notions of experimentation in terms of formal exceptionality and ingenuity. His novel A History, published in 1989, for example, celebrates fragmentation and disorder and totally ignores old literary conventions of plot, set, action and character. “There is no main character, no unitary voice, no tight progression in the narrative, no single or even double plot” (Moseley 1997: 113). Some critics, especially those of the “‟but-does-he-write-proper-novels‟ school of criticism” (ibid.: 110) argue that A History is not even a novel but rather “a random series of apparently unrelated episodes” (Buxton 2000: 56) or “a gathering of prose pieces, some fiction, others rather like essays” (Oates 1989: 12). Barnes himself, however, frequently embraces the idea of the novel as “a very broad and generous enclosing form” (Barnes quoted in Moseley 1997: 10) pleading for “greater inclusivity rather than any exclusivity” (ibid.: 10). Thus, he claims his right to break or alienate conventions in order to reinvent new ways of literary representation and perception. The third reason why Barnes‟s novels are often seen as being thoroughly postmodernist is his adherence to epistemological ideas of the postmodern tradition. This becomes particularly evident in his treatment of truth and historiographic credibility:

Instead of the traditional chronological ordering favoured by historians, this book proceeds by juxtapositions, by

parallels and contrasts, by connections that depend on irony or accident. Additionally Barnes uses a bewildering

variety of narrative voices for the book's different episodes. It is as if Barnes was straining to differentiate his

"historical" work from that of historians who aspire to a stance of objectivity. [Finney 1999]

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In this context it is inevitable to mention Linda Hutcheon‟s general definition of postmodern novels as historiographic metafiction, a term implying that “the certainty of direct reference of the historical novel or even the nonfictional novel is gone” (Hutcheon 1989: 4). According to Hutcheon, historiographic metafiction “offers a sense of the presence of the past, but this is a past that can only be known from its texts, its traces - be they literary or historical” (ibid.). Thus, traditional concepts of historiography including the possibility of objectivity are deconstructed. Calling into question the reliability of historical knowledge and its textual representation, the term historiographic metafiction seems to perfectly match the structural and philosophical groundings of Julian Barnes‟s writings revealing them as works of „pure‟ postmodernism. But this observation does not take account of the ambiguity and complexity of Barnes‟s handling of the issue of truth. In fact, he does not simply take over common postmodern principles but rather plays with them on his own terms. In A History he never stops asking questions and searching for answers revealing the relativity of each and every theory or paradigm. Bearing this in mind I will examine in the following chapters how far Barnes‟s concept of history and his main answers to its depressing notions - religion, art and finally love - reveal a subtle but persistent pursuit of meaning.

3. HISTORY AND MEANING IN A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10 ½ CHAPTERS

In an episode of A History one of the characters, namely the television historian Franklin Hughes, plays with an intriguing thought: “he was toying with something serious but sexy - likea personal history of the world - which might roost for months in the best-seller lists” (HW: 45). Barnes did not only play with the thought but really did it and confronted the literary world with a personal history of the world that turned out to be a best-seller. The provocative and playful title mirrors the novel‟s whimsical and humorous character and suggests “the presence of irony” (Moseley 1997: 109). Apparently, Barnes did not want to provide a serious historiographic paper about „the‟ history of the world but rather a parodic and surprising piece of writing composed and designed to relativize historical discourses and to point out to their fictional nature (cf. Sesto 2001: 53). Thus, to Barnes, the history world is just a collection of “voices echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories that sometimes seem to overlap” (HW: 292). What he seems to suggest is universal chaos and the non-existence of meanings and truths. This statement, however, is qualified immediately by the very fact that there are “strange links” and

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“impertinent connections” (ibid.). Although this may not annul the typically postmodern crisis of meaning implied, it hints at Barnes ambiguous attitude towards the issue and allows further speculations. Barnes does not simply celebrate „historiographic pessimism‟ but tries to provide a way for the human spirit to survive the cruelty of history. In order to follow these traces of a quasi „post-postmodernist‟ attitude, the first section will document the author‟s concept of history and its consequences. In the second section I will then analyze how, according to Barnes, religion, art and, in particular, love may provide a way how to deal with the latter.

3.1 “SOOTHING FABULATION - BARNES CONCEPT OF HISTORY

As mentioned earlier, Barnes‟s work is a classic example of historiographic metafiction and can be described as utterly sceptical of anything absolute, whether in terms of truth, the possibility of objectivity and cultural certainties or in relation to the legitimization of grand humanistic projects, particularly embodied in the notion of progress. Hence, he supports the idea of the historian as organizer and relater who tries to establish patterns of meanings and great aims in order to deal with the actually chaotic and meaningless nature of history (cf. Finney 1999). To Barnes, the latter seems to be nothing but a series of accidents that we, the people, are unwilling to accept: “And while we fret and writhe in bandaged uncertainty [...]we fabulate. We make up a story to cover the facts we don‟t know or can‟t accept; we keep a few true facts and spin a new story round them. Our panic and our pain are only eased by soothing fabulation; we call it history” (HW: 292). A History is indeed a “bricolage” (Finney 1999) of fragmented stories or histories. There is, however, a structure in this book linking these stories through reoccurring themes and patterns of whom the most important are „catastrophes‟ (especially maritime catastrophes) and „myth‟.

3.1.1 HISTORY BETWEEN MYTH AND CATASTROPHE

In his book Images of Crisis George P. Landow indicates that “the journey of life” or the “voyage” and maritime disasters, epitomized in the image of “the man shipwrecked and cast away”, are dominant scientific paradigms of Western culture (cf. Landow 1982: 16). Barnes takes up this point in the first chapter of A History in which all leitmotifs are established: the

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