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Research Paper; Topic: Postmodernist Methods in Flaubert's Parrot
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UNIVERSITY OF MOSTARFACULTY OF HUMANITIES
ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENTFOURTH YEAR
Nedim Junuzović
Postmodernist Methods in Flaubert’s Parrot
Research paper
ContentsIntroduction............................................................................................................................................3
Postmodernist Methods in Flaubert's Parrot...........................................................................................4
Postmodernism – history and definition.............................................................................................4
Methods – postmodernist concepts in Flaubert’s Parrot.........................................................................5
The death of grand narratives – levels of narration.............................................................................5
Metafiction.........................................................................................................................................6
Intertextuality.....................................................................................................................................6
Hybridity............................................................................................................................................7
Fragmentation.....................................................................................................................................8
Dissolution of the one.........................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................9
Literature................................................................................................................................................9
Introduction
As an introduction to this paper, we need to establish a starting point to postmodernism and its
characteristics. Afterwards the goals of this paper will be summarized and explained in
reference to postmodernism and its methods.
Moreover, as postmodernism represents rather a broad thematic sphere, this paper is bound to
only postmodernist methods in the novel. Those methods can be used to any given
postmodernist novel since the characteristics of this period are found in every writing of that
specific time. Postmodernism in itself is a paradoxical and confusing phenomenon.
Scepticism is very common through postmodernist work as we will see through the following
papers.
Postmodernist Methods in Flaubert's Parrot
Postmodernism – history and definition.
The history of postmodernism dates back to after WW II which had great influence on society
because of the existential disillusion after the Holocaust. However, the postmodernist period
is more often set to the 1960s because modernism was not productive anymore.
In order to understand the term “postmodernism”, its reference and meaning, definitions are
provided so that the reader gains more access into a whole sphere of (un)related1 meanings:
LONGMAN Dictionary of Contemporary English: “a style of building, painting,
writing etc, developed in the late 20th century, that uses a mixture of old and new
styles as a reaction against modernism”
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary: “a style and movement in art, architecture,
literature, etc. in the late 20th century that reacts against modern styles, for example by
mixing features from traditional and modern styles”
As we can see, the definitions are clear and bound but the idea of postmodernism cannot fit
into such a small definition. Postmodernism is rather a way of living, a style of writing,
building and creating. It is not manifested in just one human sphere. One can find traces of
postmodernism in architecture, painting, philosophy or literature. Nevertheless, the idea of
literary postmodernism could be described (not defined) by using the key concepts which are
to be found through our novel in question. Those concepts include2:
Death of the grand narratives
Metafiction
Intertextuality
Hybridity
Fragmentarism
Dissolution of the one
Each of these concepts will be mentioned during the course of the paper.1 This term is intentionally written this way since postmodernism is more than a definition and it can hardly fit into a dictionary description. Further explanations are yet to come.2 Jørgen Riber Christensen, Charles Dickens CD-ROM, Systime, Aarhus 2000
Methods – postmodernist concepts in Flaubert’s Parrot
At this point, we have to focus on the most important part of this paper - the concepts that
characterise postmodernist writing methods. All six concepts will be defined, explained and
put into the right context with reference to the novel.
The death of grand narratives – levels of narration.
The novel is in no possible way a narrative one; it shifts from one story to the other –
unrelated to the previous one. The novel consists of 15 chapters, each one telling a different
story. Barnes makes it clear through this switching that the reader will not come across a story
in the traditional form. Above all, the story is told through the voice of Geoffrey Braithwaite,
a retired medical physician with an intense interest in Flaubert and his work. Braithwaite also
tells the reader that he will tell this story from three perspectives: his own, his wife’s Ellen
and Flaubert’s.
Moreover, the reader is confronted with four layers or levels of narration.
Firstly, there is the story of the physician Geoffrey Braithwaite. At this level, the reader is
fronted with various real persons like Jean Paul Sartre, Enid Starky and Christopher Rigs.
This is characteristic for the postmodernist period because it relativises the fictional character
of Braithwite because he appears together with these real persons.
The second level of narration is that of Braithwaite’s fictional character. He is interested in
Flaubert who died about a hundred years ago but he is still a real writer of the 19th century.
At the third level of narration, we have Gustave Flaubert, his life and relationship with
Louise. This level is particularly important because it challenges the first level of Braithwaite
and his knowledge about Flaubert. The truth, or rather the information about the truth is
questionable because this confrontation of these two levels of narration.
The fourth and final level of narration are Flaubert’s writings, in particular his fictious
characters. Braithwaite compares his own life with those characters, especially when it comes
to the death of his wife Ellen. The reader finds that Braithwaite compares his life mostly with
Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. The parallels between him and this work are that Madame
Bovary’s husband is a apothecary whereas Braithwaite is a medical physician. Further on,
there is an adulterous wife who committed suicide just like Braithwaite wife Ellen. He thinks
that his marriage is anticipated in this novel. The aim of this narrational level is to confuse the
reader and show him how difficult it is to make a distinction between life and fiction. Yet, a
narrative exists through the novel – the ever-present connection to Flaubert.
Metafiction.
The next concept of postmodernism is metafiction. Metafiction3 is best described as self-
reflexive or self-describing. The metafictional element in Flaubert’s Parrot is the book-in-the
book. At the very first level, we have Julian Barnes as the writer of the novel. Further on,
there is Geoffrey Braithwaite, the narrator who tells us the whole story. Then, there is Gustave
Flaubert, a writer who died about a hundred years ago. He is Braithwaite’s compassion, his
ultimate quest in order to find out the truth through the work and art of Flaubert. This concept
is characteristic to postmodern writings. The novel usually contains self-explaining comments
on the process of creating. The main character, Braithwaite, is the author of those comments
and the whole story is twisted with self-criticising comments about his progression and his
overall status therein. Braithwaite seems desperate to find out as much as possible about
Flaubert. He even makes it clear in the end that there is no possible way to find out the
absolute truth suggesting that the absence of reliable answers is the only reality. Even the
parrot becomes the symbol of illusiveness of the truth. In addition to that, the reader finds
Flaubert’s writings, comments and his letters.
Intertextuality.
Furthermore, we have intertextuality. This postmodern concept is present through the novel
from the very beginning until its last chapter. As its name already suggests, it deals with lots
of twisted and unrelated stories. The reader of the novel will come across this concept as soon
as the second chapter - Chronology. There are three chronologies and they are contradictory.
The first chronology is the most optimistic account of Flaubert’s life and death.
The second chronology is a much darker and more pessimistic record of illness, commercial
and financial failures, and bereavement at the loss of close friends. In fact, the chronology
begins with a death—that of Flaubert’s infant sister—and continues dwelling on deaths all the
way through (half of the twenty one entries begin with the recording of one). A perfect
example of the difference between the first and second chronologies can be found by
comparing the entries from 1836, both of which concern Flaubert’s falling in love with Elisa
Schlesinger.
3 meta- (prefix) - beyond or at a higher level (LONGMAN Dictionary of Contemporary English)
The third chronology is composed entirely of self-referential metaphorical statements by
Flaubert, taken mostly from his letters. These quotations, as if to culminate and extend the
sentiments in the previous chronologies, run from triumphant to foreboding, elegant to absurd.
Braithwaite even mentions that Flaubert once remarked he was “bothered by [his] tendency to
metaphor,” a tendency he labelled “decidedly excessive”. Here we see both his metaphoric
skills and his excesses, all marshalled together in an attempt to describe himself.
If we take these three chronologies and compare them, we will come to the conclusion that
there are difficulties involved in writing history. The reader can see that, in all three
chronologies, there are gaps and omissions in order to achieve an overall idea of the author’s
life. However, the overall point here is not that there is no truth in these chronologies, but that
there are many truths alongside with many omissions and confusions. The idea to offer
several chronologies makes sense because not all readers will depict them the same way. The
reader’s understanding depends on his point of view, education, social standing etc.
Beside this one, the novel contains letters, essays, an exam, a biography, literary and scientific
discourse, allusions to other works of art - Madame Bovary, French Lieutenant’s Woman and
Lord of the Flies etc. In the end, the reader will come across a total of fifteen chapters. All
these facts suggest that this is not a novel in a traditional sense.
Hybridity.
Hybridity is the next concept to be explained. A hybrid is something that consists of or comes
from a mixture of two or more other things.4 Those hybrids in the novel are: biography,
dictionary, fiction, pastiche and the examination paper which are all different genres
combined in the novel to form a whole of (un)supporting parts. Why (un)supporting? As the
reader goes through the different parts of the novel, he comes to the conclusion that all those
parts are supporting each other but, at the same time, they can stand completely alone as
isolated essays, comments or critics and still be understandable each on his own.
Within the pages of Flaubert's Parrot, Barnes combines first-person narrative, chronology
(chapter 2), literary and personal biography, autobiography, detective story, essay, literary
criticism, dictionary (chapter 12), examination (chapter 14).
Fragmentation.
4 LONGMAN Dictionary of Contemporary English
The second-last concept is fragmentation. As we have already concluded, the novel is not in a
traditional form in the literary aspect. The reader will not find a clear beginning, middle and
an end. As noted above, the novel is abundant with several different aspects of writing
(chronology, letters etc.). The reader is confronted with all these parts, or to put it a more
suitable way – fragments, and he is the one who makes a whole out of these fragments.
Geoffrey is the one who tries to reconstruct history out of these fragments, but this project is
set to be a failure from the beginning. He does not know everything and his perspective is
limited and subjective which makes it hard for the reader to establish a permanent truth. The
discoveries of Geoffrey are illusive and unreliable and just these characteristics are part of our
everyday life.
Dissolution of the one.
At the end, we have come to the last concept which is left unexplained – dissolution of the
one. We have already mentioned that Braithwaite compares himself with Flaubert and his
work. He tries to define his own existence through the reconstruction of Flaubert’s biography.
In this way, personal identity is weakened and the individual has no defined role. This is done
through the concepts above which, when combined, lure the reader into total chaos. The
reader has to be careful when identifying the characters because of the narrational levels, he
has to be aware of the intertextuality and fragmentation woven into the story. The overall
story is constructed of these multiple texts and discourses.
As already mentioned in the previous segments of this work, Braithwaite constantly puts
himself and his life to comparison with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. One quotation is worth
mentioning here concerning Braithwaite’s point on Ellen’s death: “Ellen. My wife: someone I
feel I understand less well than a foreign writer dead for a hundred years. Is this an aberration,
or is it normal? Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where
things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer
books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are
other people’s lives, never your own.”5
This is important because Braithwaite tries to find out the truth about his life through art and
he is obviously aware of the fact that he did not find any more sense or explanation than
before Flaubert or the death of Ellen.
5 Barnes, Julian; Flaubert’s Parrot, FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, DECEMBER 1990
ConclusionSpeaking in general, postmodernism is very paradoxical. It is never one thing or the other,
there are always both at the same time. The contradiction would be the very second name of
postmodernism.
We have seen that this is no ordinary story, no ordinary story plot and, above all, no ordinary
characters to be dealt with. Readers are not accustomed to postmodernist writings and their
methods. Such books demand a specific approach and knowledge about all these methods. In
this book, the reader has to make a distinction between real and fictional characters and texts.
Yet, at some points it is impossible to distinguish authentic texts from the fictional ones and
the point here is to confuse the reader in his attempt to do so. The reader's passion for truth is
not satisfied. The image of the parrot is significant in this context, it is a symbol of mimicry
(the parrot is the emblem of the writer's voice) but neither Braithwaite nor the reader can say
for sure that they would know which parrot is the authentic one. The parrot is the symbol of
illusiveness of the truth. Barnes ironises these humanist notions of the narrator, suggesting
how pointless it is to keep trying to find out anything about the parrot, or the life of the author,
suggesting the absence of reliable answers as the only reality. He suggests this at the very end
of the novel. This confusion and masking of the truth is specific for postmodernist writing.
The novel ends in Rouanne in France, just where it started, with Braithwaite being unable to
identify the right parrot, finding that there could even be the third parrot, indicating that his
pursuit was impossible and even unnecessary.
Literature
Barnes, Julian; Flaubert’s Parrot, FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, DECEMBER 1990
Bentley, Nick Contemporary British Fiction, Edinburgh Critical Guides, 2008
ed. James F. English, A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction, 2006
Jørgen Riber Christensen, Charles Dickens CD-ROM, Systime, Aarhus 2000
LONGMAN Dictionary of Contemporary English