19.01.1946 - …

Julian Patrick Barnes

Early life*City of London School 1957-1964

*Magdalen College, Oxford

*Worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years

*Worked as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman and the New Review

* Television critic, first for the New Statesman and then for The Observer 1979-1986

Career*The first novel – Metroland 1980

*In 1989 Barnes published A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

*In 1991, he published Talking It Over

*Arthur & George 2005

*In 2013 Barnes published Levels of Life

Postmodernism

The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain

tendencies in post-World War II literature. It is both a continuation of the

experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period

and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in

Modernist literature.

Some features of postmodernism:

*the erosion of the boundaries between "high" art and "low" art

*the development of numerous hybrid genres

*the authors write not in one certain genre, but they combine and mix them

*«death of author» - they now do not press their opinion on a reader, but only give the story to them

*irony, playfulness and black humor

Awards and honors*2012 Europese Literatuurprijs

*2011 Costa Book Awards, shortlist, The Sense of an Ending

*2011 Booker Prize, winner, The Sense of an Ending

*2011 David Cohen Prize for Literature.

*2008 San Clemente literary prize

*2004 Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

*2004 Austrian State Prize for European Literature

*1985 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize

*1993 Shakespeare Prize

*1992 Prix Femina Étranger, winner, Talking It Over

*1986 E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

*1981 Somerset Maugham Award

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Plot

Chapter 1. "The Stowaway"

It is an alternative account of the

story of Noah's Ark from the point of

view of the woodworm, who were not allowed onboard and were stowaways during

the journey.

Chapter 2. "The Visitors" 

This chapter describes the hijacking of a cruise liner,

similar to the 1985 incident of the Achille

Lauro.

Chapter 3. "The Wars of Religion"

This chapter reports a trial against the

woodworms in a church, as they

have caused the building to

become unstable.

Chapter 4. "The Survivor"

It is set in a world in which

the Chernobyl disaster was "the first big accident". Journalists report

that the world is on the brink of nuclear

war. The protagonist escapes

by boat to avoid a nuclear holocaust.

Chapter 5, "Shipwreck"

It is an analysis of Géricault's painting, The Raft of the Medusa. The

first half narrates the historical events of the shipwreck and the survival of the

crew members. The second half of the chapter analyses the painting itself. It describes Géricault's "softening" the

impact of reality in order to preserve the aestheticism of the work, or to make the story of what happened more palatable.

Chapter 7.Three Simple

Stories: Voyage of the

Damned

“History repeats itself, the first

time as tragedy, the second time as

farce.”

Napoleon “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

Chapter 8. “Upstream

!”

Parenthesis: the heart

isn‘t heart-shaped

“We get scared by history; we allow ourselves to be

bullied by dates.”

“History isn’t what happened. History is just what historians tell us. There was a pattern, a plan, a movement, expansion, the march of democracy; it is a tapestry, a flow of events, a complex narrative, connected, explicable. One good story leads to another.”

“We must believe that it is 99 per cent obtainable; or if we can’t believe this we must believe that 43 per cent objective truth is better than 41 per cent.”

Chapter 6. The Mountain Chapter 9.

Project Ararat

Chapter 10. The Dream: postmodern

Heaven

“ I went on several cruises; – I learned canoeing, mountaineering, ballooning; –

I got into all sorts of danger and escaped; – I explored the jungle; – I watched a court case (didn’t agree with the verdict); – I tried being a painter (not as bad as I thought!) and a surgeon; – I fell in love, of course, lots of times; – I pretended I was the last person on earth (and the first).”

Characters*Noah, appears in The Stowaway, The Mountain

*Woodworm, appears in Stowaway, The Wars of Religion

*Black Thunder, appears in The Visitors

*Franklin Hughes, appears in The Visitors

*Kathy, appears in The Survivor

*Gericault, appears in The Shipwreck

*Bartholome Chassenee, appears in The Wars of Religion

*Amanda Fergusson , appears in The Mountain

*Miss Logan , appears in The Mountain

*God, appears in All

The main themes*God and God’s sixth-day

creation

*The sea

*Survival

* The role of the great figures in history

*Different views on historical events

Symbols

The Dove VS The Raven