Julian Barnes

by Childs, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780719081064
• ISBN10: 0719081068
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-08-15
• Publisher: Manchester Univ Pr

Summary

Julian Barnes is a comprehensive introductory overview of the novels that situates his work in terms of fabulation and memory, irony and comedy. It pursues a broadly chronological line through Barnes's literary career, but along the way it also shows how certain key thematic preoccupations and obsessions seem to tie Barnes's oeuvre together (love, death, art, history, truth, and memory). Chapters provide detailed reading of each major publication in turn while treating the major concerns of Barnes's fiction, including art, authorship, history, love and religion. The book is very lucidly written, and it is also satisfyingly comprehensive - alongside the 'canonical' Barnes texts, it includes brief but illuminating discussion of the crime fiction that Barnes has published under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. This detailed study of fictions of Julian Barnes from 'Metroland' to 'Arthur & george' also benefits from archival research into his unpublished materials.The book will be a useful resource for scholars, postgraduates and undergraduates working in the field of contemporary literature.

Author Biography

Peter Childs is Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Gloucestershire.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements * Series Editor’s Foreword * List of Abbreviations * Introduction : Pleasure in Form * About to be less deceived:  Metroland * Silly to Worry About: Before She Met Me * What happened to the truth is not recorded: Flaubert’s Parrot * Intricate Rented World: Staring at the Sun * Safe for Love: A History of the World in 10½ Chapters *  Tell me Yours: Talking it Over and Love, etc. * We won’t get fooled again: The Porcupine * History doesn’t relate: England, England * Retrospectively Imagined Memorials: Cross Channel and The Lemon Table * Conviction and Prejudice: Arthur & George * Select Bibliography