Letters & Arts

Matters of identity happen to be of a recurrent theme in postmodern fiction which reflects the zeitgeist of postmodern philosophy. The latter tends to display a sceptical view upon all past knowledge regarded as the knowledge which is, now, being rejected and the truthfulness alongside the authenticity of which is being evaluated. The present paper addresses the notion as well as the constructedness of Englishness in Julian Barnes's fictional work; Arthur & George (2005) and England, England (1996), whereby Barnes treats Englishness as either an invented/constructed notion or an identity of its own existence.

Postmodern literature, fiction in particular, is, according to Barth (1984), a literature of exhausted possibility due to its entangled thematic and technical approach which defies the conventional modern fictional form. It reflects the zeitgeist or the spirit of postmodernism which is regarded as a revaluation of the modern enterprise; an enterprise that embodies universality and coherence. The present research paper attempts to address the recurrent thematic element that postmodern fiction revolves around: that of the presence of the historiographic element in postmodern fiction which reflects in itself the evaluation of past history; such a fictional preoccupation reflects the major postmodern philosophers' and thinkers' concerns, such as those of Lyotard and Baudrillard, on the impossibility for the existence of a universal coherent history. This criterion is one amongst other criteria that justify the exhaustion of postmodern fiction.

The present paper attempts to reawaken the avant-gardism of the literary Stream of Consciousness; a twentieth-century psychological concept that has been accommodated into fictional exertion through the Interior Monologue. The first practitioners of this technique and mode of narrative reportedness are Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, and James Joyce, all of whom are modernist fictional writers who engaged with what previous novelists of the nineteenth century failed to engage with. Woolf observed-in a lecture given to the Cambridge Heretics Society in May 1924-that: "no generation since the world began has known quite so much about character as our generation". Woolf's fiction tends to be psychological, for she experiments with the working of the psyche of her characters and the permanence of the past in the present beyond the reach of realism. Her fiction treats the complex networks of emotions and memories of which the character is the center of the narrative. This paper accordingly, addresses the philosophical background of the Stream of Consciousness and its use within fictional exertion and how the latter is deployed in Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925) to show and uncover the anxieties vis-à-vis her thanatophobia, not only this, but also to express the anxieties of the Great War and the disillusionment towards the modern enterprise.

The present paper attempts to reawaken the avant-gardism of the literary Stream of Consciousness; a twentieth-century psychological concept that has been accommodated into fictional exertion through the Interior Monologue. The first practitioners of this technique and mode of narrative reportedness are Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, and James Joyce, all of whom are modernist fictional writers who engaged with what previous novelists of the nineteenth century failed to engage with. Woolf observed-in a lecture given to the Cambridge Heretics Society in May 1924-that: "no generation since the world began has known quite so much about character as our generation". Woolf's fiction tends to be psychological, for she experiments with the working of the psyche of her characters and the permanence of the past in the present beyond the reach of realism. Her fiction treats the complex networks of emotions and memories of which the character is the center of the narrative. This paper accordingly, addresses the philosophical background of the Stream of Consciousness and its use within fictional exertion and how the latter is deployed in Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925) to show and uncover the anxieties vis-à-vis her thanatophobia, not only this, but also to express the anxieties of the Great War and the disillusionment towards the modern enterprise.

Postmodern literature, fiction in particular, is, according to Barth (1984), a literature of exhausted possibility due to its entangled thematic and technical approach which defies the conventional modern fictional form. It reflects the zeitgeist or the spirit of postmodernism which is regarded as a revaluation of the modern enterprise; an enterprise that embodies universality and coherence. The present research paper attempts to address the recurrent thematic element that postmodern fiction revolves around: that of the presence of the historiographic element in postmodern fiction which reflects in itself the evaluation of past history; such a fictional preoccupation reflects the major postmodern philosophers' and thinkers' concerns, such as those of Lyotard and Baudrillard, on the impossibility for the existence of a universal coherent history. This criterion is one amongst other criteria that justify the exhaustion of postmodern fiction.

Matters of identity happen to be of a recurrent theme in postmodern fiction which reflects the zeitgeist of postmodern philosophy. The latter tends to display a sceptical view upon all past knowledge regarded as the knowledge which is, now, being rejected and the truthfulness alongside the authenticity of which is being evaluated. The present paper addresses the notion as well as the constructedness of Englishness in Julian Barnes's fictional work; Arthur & George and England, England, whereby Barnes treats Englishness as either an invented/constructed notion or an identity of its own existence.