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

MASTER NARRATIVES (NATION, WESTERN CIVILIZATION, PROGRESS)

Typical of postmodernism, doesn't believe in big narratives about the nation, about the self and about the world.

The idea is that nations are founded on big narratives. Homi Bhaba identifies nation and narration; we tell stories about our national history.

"Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind's eye. Such an image of the nation - or narration - might seem impossibly romantic and excessively metaphorical, but it is from those traditions of political thought and literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful historical idea in the west." (Homi Bhaba, Nation and Narration, Routledge, London,1990)

How do we form our idea of the nation? Through stories, myths, legends, about our past; and this is true for every nation.

"A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which in truth are but one,"

constitutethis soul or spiritual principle. One lies in the past, one in the present. One is thepossession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present-day consent, thedesire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one hasreceived in an undivided form. (…) The nation, like the individual, is the culmination of along past of endeavours, sacrifice, and devotion.” (Homi Bhaba ed., Nation and Narration,Routledge, London,1990)

In Italy we do the same when we think of our history, it is something we sharewhen we think of our heritage, and this is true for every nation in the world. It’s anarration we tell, it’s a story that we share, a sort of mythical past. The nation is likea person, a construction of nationhood is like a construction of a personality.

England:DISTRUST OF MASTER NARRATIVES

In England, the present“Britain had once held dominion over great tracts of the world‘s surface, painted it pink from

pole to pole. As time went by, these imperial possessions had spun off and set themselves up as sovereign nations. Quite right, too. So where did that leave us now? With something called the United Kingdom which, to be honest and facing facts, didn‘t live up to its adjective. Its members were united in the way that tenants paying rent to the same landlord were united.” (E,E, 39-40)

(On this issue, watch «Everything you know about Brexit is wrong» by Gurminder Bhambra https://youtu.be/dkBnkBT_x-M)

If we think about the referendum in Scotland, and the welsh as well, underline the fact that the idea of United Kingdom is a fake idea. Ireland became independent in 1922, it’s a rather difficult coexistence. England:DISTRUST OF MASTER NARRATIVES in England, the past

In an interview, Barnes emphasizes the analogies that exist between the ways people constantly reorder their personal memory and what has been called the invention of national traditions: "Getting its

"History wrong is part of becoming a nation. And we do the same thing with our own lives. We invent, ransack and reorder our childhood. (...) I am interested in what you might call the invention of tradition. Getting its history wrong is part of becoming a nation." (Julian Barnes)

When we try to think about our own story, our own lives, we invent sometimes. Because it's very difficult to reconstruct our past. "What's your first memory?" (see excerpts from chapter one of EE numbered as 1 and 2) (vedi foto scheda allegata nella mail che vi ho mandato)

First memory: The Martha has is from when she was solving a Jigsaw Puzzle.

Second memory: The she has is connected to the Agricultural Fair. The fair represents a celebration of old England, rural England. So there is a comparison between nation and individual. The phase of rural England over-lapses Martha Cochrane's childhood, her childhood is compared to agricultural England, rural England. It's

An idyllic vision of the past, a pastoral version of the past, where everything seemed to be natural, innocent, beautiful, perfect and complete. Song by Simon and Garfunkel —> rural England is perfect, reign of beauty and innocent compared to the terrible dimension of war, and this is what we also have in this book. The reminiscence of the agricultural show is connected in Martha's mind to an idea of innocence, perfection, completeness and happiness. When she thinks about her childhood, holding hands with her parents, she felt safe and happy. The children had to produce some flowers or vegetables or homemade products, and the children who produced the best were given prizes. Third memory: In the she goes to school, same thing happens with lists of historic events, she sees them like a poem. Until the sixties in primary schools they used to teach by using rhymes and poetry, so you had to repeat and chant what they were trying to teach you like historic events (learn by heart). Final.memory she remembers when her father left her and her mother, it's a very neat memory not confused. And then how she confronted him when she was 25 years old and meets him again. (Vedi analisi direttamente sulla scheda di questo capitolo). Conclusions: this is how she builds up her character with the idea that there is no order, it was just an illusion. It was just a myth, and she becomes a cynical woman. And this is how she comes to meet Jack Pitman, and she will cooperate with him in the project of the island. To make England England a perfect copy of England on the isle of wright.

«It was like a country remembering its history. The past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.» (EE, p. 6)

When you remember your own past you can get everything wrong. This is true for both nations and individuals.

There is always a missing piece.

Your motherland/fatherland may be unreliable.

Nations invent their own past in the attempt to find order andrhythm in a series of confused events. Facts can be embellished to improve the image of the nation (ex. Imperialism in England, burden of the Western man).«At university Martha had made friends with a Spanish girl, Cristina. The common history of their two countries, or at least the contentious part, lay centuries back; but even so, when Cristina had said, in a moment of friendly teasing, 'Francis Drake was a pirate,' she had said No he wasn't, because she knew he was an English hero and a Sir and an Admiral and therefore a Gentleman. When Cristina, more seriously this time, repeated, 'He was a pirate,' Martha knew that this was the comforting if necessary fiction of the defeated. Later, she looked up Drake in a British encyclopaedia, and while the word 'pirate' never appeared, the words 'privateer' and 'plunder' frequently did, and she could quite see that one person's plundering privateer might be another person's pirate, but even so Sir Francis

"Drake remained for her an English hero, untainted by this knowledge." (EE, p. 17)

Conclusion: what is a nation?

Nations are defined by a mythical reconstruction of their past.

Nations are defined by culture and actual social life (what you do with your fellow citizens).

Nations are unstable, they have their beginning and their end (nations didn't always exist).

Nations are like individuals remembering their own past.

The nation is a form of cultural elaboration (particularly strong idea in Antonio Gramsci's book).

THE TIMELINE IS REVERSIBLE: PAST AND FUTURE ARE INTERCHANGEABLE DIMENSIONS

"The past is really just the present in fancy dress." (EE, pp. 194-195)

Does life really change or not? Maybe things don't really change they just put on different clothes. So maybe human nature just changes its clothing every time it makes a mistake.

HISTORY

"History isn't what happened. History is just what historians tell us."

[...] And we, the readers of history, the sufferers from history, we scan the pattern for hopeful conclusions, for the way ahead. [...] The history of the world? Just voices echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories that sometimes seem to overlap; strange links, impertinent connections." (Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 and 1/2 Chapters, 1989)

There is the idea that you can sell your past, make money out of it. The island project is based on the idea of intellectual tourism, think about people who go to Venice, they sell beauty and architecture but also its own past. The island project is based on the idea that the English can sell their own past, the idea of Old England. So other people make things cheaper, sometimes we are behind and sometimes we are ahead. "Other people make things cheaper. Sometimes we are ahead of the game, sometimes behind. But what we do have, what we shall always have, is what others don't:

an accumulation of time… It's a question of placing the product correctly, that's all.' ‘England is a nation of great age, great history, great accumulated wisdom. Social and cultural history – stacks of it, reams of it – eminently marketable, never more so than in the current climate. Shakespeare, Queen Victoria, Industrial Revolution, gardening, that sort of thing. We must sell our past to the nations of the future.” (EE, 39)

Here we see England regress to a much more primitive condition, progress can be reversible, England, England becoming richer and richer so that the copy becomes a thriving place.«Mass depopulation now took place. Those of Caribbean and Subcontinental origin began returning to the more prosperous lands from which their great-grandparents had once arrived.» (EE, p. 252)

DISTRUST OF POLITICS AND IDEOLOGIES

Orwell has a strong individual vision of England. As a democratic socialist he believed in the values of democracy

which according to him belong to Britain. So there is still an ideology behind the idea of a Nation.

Pagina 8 di 12

THE MODERNIST IDEA: (FAITH IN POLITICS AND IDEOLOGIES

We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official – the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the ‘nice cup of tea’. The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. [ENGLAND, YOUR ENGLAND by George Orwell (1941) from The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius in 1941. …]

BBC video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgjoTKqNNU4

In England, England there is no positive ideology behind, there is a construction and deconstruction of Englishness.