Foreign Literature Studies ›› 2020, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (4): 117-125.

• British Literature Studies • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Between Past and Future: The Historical Discourse in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Lei Wufeng   

  • Online:2020-08-25 Published:2021-02-25
  • About author:Lei Wufeng is an associate professor at the Chinese Department of the School of Literature, Northwestern University (Xi'an 710027, China). His major research interests include British and American literature and Western literary theory. Email: bluesky945@126.com
  • Supported by:
    A Study of Spivak's View of World Literature” (13J041) sponsored by the Social Science Project, Shan'xi Province

Abstract: In Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, ten chapters present the clustering structure of history by deconstructing the “truth” of the past. Such a historical structure, which coalesces the past and the future into “the present” and makes them reflect each other, deconstructs the narrative conventions and discourse forms in the writing of totalized history and subverts its hidden ideological mechanism. A compatible and future-oriented world history will become possible when the subalterns and the heterogeneous factors are properly represented and, furthermore, the historical stories in the ten chapters and the vitality of love in the half-chapter interlude generate an innate response, breaking up the bondage of egocentrism and embedding the future redemption in the flowing “present”.

Key words: A History of the World in 10½, Chapters, Julian Barnes, star clusters, totality, the vitality of love

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