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REINVENTING AND REPLICATING NATIONAL IDENTITY. THE JIGSAW PUZZLE OF ENGLISHNESS IN JULIAN BARNES’ ENGLAND, ENGLAND


ANDREIA IRINA SUCIU, MIHAELA CULEA
“Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacău Romania

Issue:

CP, Number 23

Section:

No. 23 (2018)

Abstract:

Julian Barnes’ novel England, England, published in 1998 is an invitation to solving a puzzle. This perspective through which we are invited to read the novel is overlapped to the idea of memory and the manner in which the past is reconstructed via a subjective, flawed memory. When this is backgrounded against the context of the millennial consumerism, corporative profit-making and egomaniacal figures, the result is a farcical and satirical account of some aspects connected to one’s personal history and a nation’s history whose main paradigms are completeness and fitting, as this article seeks to uncover.

Keywords:

jigsaw puzzle, national/personal identity, cohesion vs fragmentation, to reconstruct/to reassemble/to reorder, corporate profit-making, theme park, historical regression.

Code [ID]:

CP201823V00S01A0008 [0004791]

Note:

Full paper:

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