The Covenant Motif and Literature Law in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Abstract

Abstract: With a seemingly complex and multilayered theme, compounded with Julian Barnes's various concerns with law, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters not only represents the process of how the law is generated and implemented, but also generalizes, in abstract terms, some of the conflicts in human history as opposing legal values by exploring the motif of covenant symbolized by a recurrent image of ark. These conflicts of legal values reveal Barnes's reflections on the “natural law”. In Barnes's writing, both “law” and “nature” become paradoxical concepts, which turn the writing of law and covenant in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters into a metafictional representation of his literary ideas: The legality of literature itself generates the tension between its “text” and “spirit” in the course of “the author's legislation” and “the reader's judgement”.

Key words: Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10½Chapter, covenant, nature, literature law

Xiao Chengang. The Covenant Motif and Literature Law in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2020, 42(5): 77-88.

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