Julian Barnes – a cosmopolitan author Cover Image

Julian Barnes – a cosmopolitan author
Julian Barnes – a cosmopolitan author

Author(s): Aura Sibişan
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Editura Universitatii Transilvania din Brasov
Keywords: cosmopolitanism; simulacra; communication; mechanisms; mirroring; identity

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents aspects of the work of Julian Barnes from a contemporary cultural perspective, meant to discuss the British writer’s response to the dissolution of meaning in contemporary society. Cosmopolitanism and a critical view towards simulacra are two attitudes that may define a meaningful life, in Barnes’s view. In the novel “England, England” we find challenges to conventions of the novel as a genre, and a discussion of the human costs of the “society as spectacle”. Therefore, the insidious processes of transformation of meaning are exposed by the British writer in “England, England”.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 95-106
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: English