Riassunto esame letteratura inglese, prof. Logaldo, libro consigliato England, England, Barnes

18th of April 2018

Letteratura inglese - Prof. Logaldo

Julian Barnes - England, England

Julian Barnes is a postmodernist writer.

The novel was published in 1998, it was a very successful novel, it was even shortlisted for the Booker Prize. England?

Why has the teacher chosen England? All the novels that we have to read for Zuccato and Casella have something in common, they are all about utopia and dystopia. For this reason she chose a book that is also a utopia, but a very particular one, a postmodern utopia.

Utopia literally means a non-place, non topos. Thomas More’s Utopia is the only example of utopia we have read, because utopia has also another meaning, good, so the good place. Utopia is a no-place but also a good, ideal place. But this is true only for this book. Swift’s utopia, and Orwell’s and Huxley’s utopia, becomes something opposite, it becomes a dystopia. So it’s no longer an ideal place but becomes a horrible place with negative connotations.

England

The title: England, England

It’s a strange title, a kind of slogan, it contains rhythm. In the book there are a lot of parodies and nursery rhymes which are based on rhythm, repetition, wordplay: but as we’ll see they are parodies of nursery rhymes and of prayers. It sounds also like a kind of slogan, a patriotic version of nationalism but we are going to see a parody of nationalism.

The repetition of the same word underlines the fact that the two Englands aren’t the same. The first England denotes the Country, but the second one is a connotation word, so it refers to all the mental associations that arise with this word. Why England and not the UK or Britain? Because it’s a form of cultural power, when we think about Britain we think about English culture like London, Tower Bridge, double-deckers, etc. But not all the English are happy about this, like the Scottish or the Welsh. Finally we notice that they are not written the same, England, England. The second one is written in italics; we usually use italics when we are writing a bibliography and we write the title in italics. Italics is associated with the idea of text clarity, and in this case in particular, to the idea of fiction. The first England is the real England, the second one is the fictional version of England.

Here we can see a map of the Isle of Wight, it’s in the south of England. In the book they decided to make a copy of England on the Isle of Wight, a perfect replica of England. The strange thing of this utopia is that it is a postmodernist one. Do you think that the real and the fictional are separated in postmodernism? No. Postmodernism has been described as a short circuit between the real and the fictional.

Pagina 1 di 12

The idea at the core of this novel is that everything is a representation. There is no real reality. Reality is in any case a cultural construct. England, it’s not a utopia as a place totally invented, because it is exactly like the real England. So it’s not either a better or a worse place, it’s simply a place. We can describe it as a theme park made for tourists but this copy will question the real England.

At the end of the book the two dimensions will become interchangeable, so you can pass from the real one to the fictional one.

These are some of the themes and questions we are going to see:

What does it mean to be English? What is history? “We are going to sell our past” - famous phrase you can see in the book. And sometimes we do that too, we sell our past to tourists. What is the idea of time we have in postmodernism? There is no idea of progress, just like for the real and the fictional, also for past and future they become interchangeable categories. What is tradition? Tradition is a cultural construct. There is a very interesting association in the book between the construction of tradition and the construction of personality.

The main character is a girl called Martha Cochrane and she is asked “What is your first memory?”. The history of this character is like the history of a nation remembering its own past. The making of tradition in a country is the same as for a person to remember her or his own past. So nationhood is identified with personhood. What is real? In a postmodern age there is no reality, only representations of reality. When you travel around do you really look at reality or do you spend most of your time taking pictures with your cellphones? So it’s hard to identify what is real in our postmodern age. This is why in the book the copy becomes the real one, there is no authenticity.

What does it mean to be English, Englishness?

This is the first question they have to find an answer to when they decide to create a copy of England. Orwell defines England as a democratic country but also everything we associate to English life. Englishness is a very controversial matter, especially today after decolonization, immigration, the British identity has become even more problematic.

Culture is a list of things which are arbitrary, what aristocratic people think of England is different from the middle class or the lower class. We could make endless lists of English things. I’m talking about lists, because if you want to make a copy of England you need to know what people want and what people think about Englishness. The copy has to meet the needs of the people.

Jack Pitman, who wants to create this copy, makes a survey all around the world and asks people what they associate to Englishness and so he creates the 50 Quintessences of Englishness:

• 1. Royal Family
• 6. A Robin in the snow
• 2. Big Ben / Houses of Parliament
• 7. Robin Hood and his Merry Men
• 3. Manchester United Football Club
• 8. Cricket
• 4. Class system
• 9. White cliffs of Dover
• 5. Pubs
• 10. Imperialism

Pagina 2 di 12

2nd of May 2018

What did we say last time?

The title is quite strange, we have England England, a repetition of the same word which suggests that there are two types of England, one is real and England as a replica,

The ‘real’ England representation, as text, fiction, the other is a copy. The book talks metadiscourse about the second one, a faithful reproduction of England in the Isle of Wight.

Connotation of the word «England»

Denotation of the word «England» (all the mental associations suggested by the word)

England, England: the slogan, the rhythm of the sentence (patriotism, nationalism, poetry)

England, England: the slogan, the rhythm of the sentence (patriotism, nationalism, poetry)

The two Englands will become interchangeable, we find out that there is no difference between the original and the copy. The two words are not exactly the same because the second England is written in italics which suggests the idea of textuality, as a text, a discursive practice. It also brings with itself the idea of connotations, which means whatever is associated with the word England, all the mental associations.

The title also contains rhythm, like a slogan, because the book is a parody of the idea of patriotism, nationalism.

Utopias and dystopias

In what sense does England, England differ from the utopias and dystopias we have seen so far?

In the two novels of More and Swift, there is an idea behind the choice of islands. In Thomas More’s Utopia, this particular island was chosen because of the shape of the island, because it is moon-shaped, symmetrical. More drew inspiration from Plato’s Republic, so the shape was carefully chosen. It was also an ideal place, a utopia, because it was a safe place, it was difficult to attack it and it was protected from the winds.

“The island of Utopia is in the middle 200 miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it; but it grows narrower toward both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent: between its horns, the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass of about 500 miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay there is no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one continued harbor, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for mutual commerce” (Thomas More, Utopia, 1516)

In Gulliver’s Travels, the idea behind the islands he visits are related to society because they are supposed to be a satire of 18th century England. So in both cases there is an ideology behind it.

“The empire of Blefuscu is an island situated to the north-east of Lilliput, from which it is parted only by a channel of eight hundred yards wide. I had not yet seen it, and upon this notice of an intended invasion, I avoided appearing on that side of the coast, for fear of being discovered, by some of the