QUESTIONING THE LIMITS OF THE NOVEL IN JULIAN BARNES’S A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10 ½ CHAPTERS
QUESTIONING THE LIMITS OF THE NOVEL IN JULIAN BARNES’S A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10 ½ CHAPTERS

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters questions the limits of the novel as genre. Considered by critics not as much a novel as a collection of short stories, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters is nevertheless claimed by its author as a novel in its own right, built around a well-defined structure and recurrent characters and themes. The use of different types of discourse and points of view, as well as the overall ironic perspective on mankind’s ability to achieve historical knowledge are some of the means by which Julian Barnes calls into question the very perception of the novel as genre within the context of postmodernity.

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