Julian Barnes: Contemporary Critical Perspectives

✍ Scribed by Sebastian Groes; Peter Childs (editors)

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 193
• Series: Contemporary Critical Perspectives
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This is an up-to-date critical collection on the work of contemporary British novelist, Julian Barnes. Julian Barnes is one of the most refined British writers and distinguished intellectuals of his generation whose rich body of work has been awarded many literary prizes both in the UK and abroad. Although primarily a novelist and essayist, the ‘chameleon of British letters’ has also written short stories, television scripts and a screenplay. This critical guide provides a wide range of current critical perspectives on Barnes’ work from early bestselling novels “Flaubert’s Parrot and “The History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters” up to “Arthur and George”. Including contributions by some of the finest critics working in the contemporary field, it reflects the richness and diversity of one of Britain’s greatest living writers. “Guides in the Contemporary Critical Perspectives” series provide companions to reading and studying major contemporary authors. Each guide includes new critical essays combining textual readings, cultural analysis and discussion of key critical and theoretical issues in a clear, accessible style. They also include a preface by a major contemporary writer, a new interview with the author, discussion of film and TV adaptation and guidance on further reading.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Julian Barnes: Biographical Information
INTRODUCTION Julian Barnes and the Wisdom of Uncertainty
CHAPTER ONE The Flâneur and the Freeholder: Paris and London in Julian Barnes’s Metroland
CHAPTER TWO Inventing a Way to the Truth: Life and Fiction in Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot
CHAPTER THREE ‘A preference for things Gallic’: Julian Barnes and the French Connection
CHAPTER FOUR ‘An Ordinary Piece of Magic’: Religion in the Work of Julian Barnes
CHAPTER FIVE Crossing the Channel: Europe and the Three Uses of France in Julian Barnes’s Talking It Over
CHAPTER SIX The Story of Julian Barnes’sThe Porcupine: an Epistolary ½ Chapter
CHAPTER SEVEN Julian Barnes’s England, England and Englishness
CHAPTER EIGHT Matters of Life and Death: The Short Stories of Julian Barnes
CHAPTER NINE ‘All Letters Quoted Are Authentic’: The Past After Postmodern Fabulation in Julian Barnes’s Arthur & George
AFTERWORD Seeing and Knowing with the Eyes of Faith
REFERENCES
Index