Reinventing and Replicating National Identity. The Jigsaw Puzzle of Englishness in Julian Barnes’ England, England
Reinventing and Replicating National Identity. The Jigsaw Puzzle of Englishness in Julian Barnes’ England, England
Author(s): Andreia Irina Suciu, Mihaela CuleaSubject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Cultural history, Fiction, Studies of Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Editura Alma Mater
Keywords: jigsaw puzzle; national/personal identity; cohesion vs fragmentation; to reconstruct/to reassemble/to reorder; corporate profit-making; theme park; historical regression;
Summary/Abstract: Julian Barnes’ novel England, England, published in 1998 is an invitation to solving a puzzle. This perspective through which we are invited to read the novel is overlapped to the idea of memory and the manner in which the past is reconstructed via a subjective, flawed memory. When this is backgrounded against the context of the millennial consumerism, corporative profit-making and egomaniacal figures, the result is a farcical and satirical account of some aspects connected to one’s personal history and a nation’s history whose main paradigms are completeness and fitting, as this article seeks to uncover.
Journal: Cultural Perspectives - Journal for Literary and British Cultural Studies in Romania
- Issue Year: 2018
- Issue No: 23
- Page Range: 100-122
- Page Count: 23
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF