CC BY
25Irina Polyakova,
, Yana Zharskaya
Southern Federal University Rostov-on-Don
Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10 and a Half Chapters: Travelling through Time
Статья посвящена исследованию проблемы временной организации художественного пространства в романе Дж. Барнса «История мира в десяти с половиной главах». Речь идет об анализе тех лингвистических средств, которые позволили автору создать многомерную перспективу описываемых событий, объединить их в сложную ткань художественного произведения.
Julian Barnes’s novel is marked, among other things, by the author’s peculiar presentation of the events within different periods of time. The importance of the notion of time is suggested by the title of the novel: a history is a flow of consecutive events developing over a period of time. Still in the stories (chapters) which might probably be called ‘Barnes’s chapters of history’ the order of the recounted events will enable the reader to make sudden leaps through centuries backwards and forwards.
It is common knowledge that time in fiction is highly relative: in the first place, it is not linear so that the narrator may skip from one subject to another. Then the flow of time is quite uneven with the events developing faster or slower or there may also be no flow of time at all with the description of some general state of things. However, there usually must be a referent point or the time of the event determining the time of the occurrence of other events. Fictional time is also highly subjective as it may be used to show characters’ individual perception of events or their outlook in general. Then the events usually have duration and may be split into several phases.
In postmodernist novels the plot line is usually blurred and the events are conveyed through a number of isolated episodes or short stories. One and the same event may be shown from several completely different viewpoints. Moreover, the text usually stands out of its own limits and appeals to us, becoming no more than a line in an endless dialogue with the reader. This is done by means of addressing the reader directly and making him a co-author of the narration. In a work of contemporary fiction all these characteristics of the literary style influence to a great extent the time arrangement of the events presented to the reader.
Analyzing the time arrangement in Barnes’s novel one can find all kinds of lexical, morphological and syntactic means of time denotation. Lexical means include words with temporal meaning alongside set expressions and words which acquire their temporal meaning contextually. Such words and expressions as now, last month, in a couple of days, in a fortnight, later, soon and the like, when used in speech give temporal characteristics of the event from the point of view of the present moment or ‘the moment of speech’. But while in real intercourse the moment of speech serves as a demarcation line between the past and the future, in fiction things are much more complicated because this ‘present moment’, or time referent might be quite different for the author and/or the narrator, on the one hand, and for his characters, on the other.
For example, to make the description more vivid and to bring the scene closer to the reader the author can use the adverb now while using the past tense in his narration:
Amanda Fergusson now rested her book on her lap and looked at the ceiling in alarm. (Chapter 6, p. 170)
Or consider the example It’s that middle stretch of the night, when the curtains leak no light, the only street noise is the grizzle of a returning Romeo, and the birds haven’t begun their routine yet cheering business... I’ve watched over her in all those sewery parts of the night, and can testify that she ;
doesn’t move. (Parenthesis, p. 271).
The word ‘sewery’, which the author coins for his poetic description acquires a specific temporal meaning and serves as a metaphoric characteristic of the phrase “parts of the night”. In fact, its meaning becomes clear only within the context.
Temporal relations, the order and succession of actions can be rendered in complex sentences comprising various clauses and through the contrast of different tenses. These sentences make it easier for the reader to comprehend a complex temporal structure of the whole text where actions are not always presented chronologically. Let’s consider the following example:
Then we talked to Miguel again (3) and it turned out (4) that the Indian had started (1) this long conversation with him before we could possibly have had the accident (2) (Chapter 8, p. 260).
However, time may also be indicated indirectly, through the context, as in ‘Parenthesis where it isn’t specified. The reader can easily deduce that the action takes place in London in the second half of the twentieth century. The assumption is based on the facts which Barnes mentions here and which he is sure are well known to the reader such as Auden’s poem written in 1939, London supermarket 'Corrigans', the London tube, and mentioning of J. F. Kennedy.
It is characteristic that in all the chapters of the book the events are located in different time periods, each chapter being represented by individual narrative models of the characters. Each narrative model has a unique grammatical representation, and this creates an unparalleled polyphony of the narrative models so that different time layers of the novel are connected with each other through the characters. Thus, in the first chapter, The Stowaway, mythical times of the Flood are linked to the Present. This effect is achieved by various means. An important device employed here is the narrator’s reference to the facts of the present-day life and his usage of colloquial language. The contrast of verbal tense forms also adds to this effect:
I am hardly squeamish, but even 1 used to shudder at the scene below decks: a row of squinting monsters being manicured in a sewer. (Chapter 1, p. 3). ; •
Here the general characteristic of the ‘narrator’ is contrasted with his former experience on the Ark, which creates the effect of the present moment, first-hand narration.
As to the “omniscient author”, he is introduced when the narration is conducted in the third person singular and, for the most part, in the past tense, as in the second chapter (The Visitors):
He was not sure how many of his audience had latched on to what he was doing, but there came an occasional assenting growl. (Chapter 2, p. 50).
Thus we can see that the author manages to reveal the thoughts of the main character conducting his narration in the third person and not resorting to the direct speech. The achieved effect is that of a more objective, matter-of-fact account of events. At the same time, when the direct speech is used the author is usually withdrawn from the narration. In this respect the fourth chapter is, perhaps, the most complicated from the point of view of the narrative models. Here the real world and the subjective imaginary world of the main character intermingle and become indistinguishable. To discern them one should again regard the narrative models. The first person singular is used to describe the real life of the heroine in the hospital. By contrast, her imaginary life in a boat and on the island is related in the third person. And though the first person narration is considered to be more subjective, still in accordance with the postmodernist technique, Barnes intentionally mixes up traditional narrative models so that the forms would not match their traditional meanings, thus leaving it for the reader to ponder on the reality of the descriptions.
But certainly it is not only the peculiar arrangement of the events in each chapter but also the temporal organization of the whole novel that contributes to the specific artistic effect it produces. Thus its circu-
lar composition enables the author to link the beginning and the end of his novel. In fact, the first and the last chapters are characterized by similar narrative models: they are narrated in the first person and tell the reader about the long past events.
Having made a brief review of various linguistic means expressing temporal relations in Julian Barnes’s novel we see that the author manages to create his unique fictional world making use of all kinds of artistic tools among which the creation of various temporal narrative planes is of crucial importance.
