JULIAN BARNES'S WORK "THE SENSE OF AN ENDING" AS A PHILOSOPHICAL CONFESSIONAL NOVEL
Abstract
The article analyses one of the notable representatives of Contemporary British literature – Julian Barnes’s “The Sense of an Ending” according to the literary elements of the confessional novel. The research is dedicated to studying the features of postmodernism in the novel as the actions are narrated in the fragmentation of past memories and the non-linear mechanism of the history concept by its form. The research paper highlights the fact by comparing several scientific research that the author of the work, Julian Barnes, uses one of the main features of postmodern literature, an unreliable narrator, to describe novel's events. It is shown by using examples that the main character of the work examined his personal memories by selfreflection to restore his mental, spiritual state, and in the process of deep self-investigation, using the mechanism of history and the concepts of time, he demonstrated the inefficiency of their futile functions. In terms of content, it investigates the hero‘s confession of the sins he has committed throughout his life. The research considers the historical roots of traditional confessional novels and further depicts their unique poetic features from a theoretical point of view. The work thoroughly studies the important aspects of confessional novels in postmodern societies. Providing that several confessional topical issues are raised in the novel by the author; the critical confessional method is applied to analyse the novel. The article momentously focuses on how the actions of the hero change under the influence of internal and external forces that are philosophically expressed in the example of the events of the work in two stages – through his adolescence and old age. Such a two-stage approach in the work implies not only the hero‘s confessions of his sins, but also the author’s confession of the “unrest” caused by some critical social changes of a certain period. As far as the role of confessional novels in the critical study of the specific aspects of postmodern societies shows its practical relevance, this scientific work carried out on “The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes might become a significant point in introducing this work to the general public as a confessional novel.
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