scholarly journals Is Julian Barnes Reliable in Narrating the Noise of Time?

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Michael H. M. Ng

Wayne C. Booth says that a novelist creates an implied author that is an ideal, literary, and created version of the real author. Seymour Chatman has emphasized the implied author is a principle that invents the narrator who has the direct means of communicating. Chatman says it is important distinguish among narrator, implied author, and real author. Booth originally says that unreliable narrators vary on how far and in what direction they depart from the author’s norms. The concept of Booth’s term ‘unreliable narrator’ has been a subject to debate. In Ansgar Nunning’s perspective, the reader has a role in detecting narrational unreliability. There are four forms of unreliable narration: intranarrational unreliability, internarrational unreliability, intertextual unreliability, and extratextual unreliability. Julian Barnes’ novel The Noise of Time is a fictional biography of a real Russian composer named Dmitri Shostakovich whose work of art flourishes even under the oppression of the Soviet government. According to a review in The Guardian, the novel is mainly on Shostakovich’s battle with his conscience when living under the rule of Joseph Stalin. It is possible that the real author, implied author, and narrator are the same person in Barnes’ case. The objective of this article is to examine whether Barnes is reliable in telling the story of Shostakovich or not.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hamish Clayton

<p>The unreliable narrator is one of the most contested concepts in narrative theory. While critical debates have been heated, they have tended to foreground that the problem of the unreliable narrator is epistemological rather than ontological: it is agreed that narrators can be unreliable in their accounts, but not how the unreliable narrator ought to be defined, nor even how readers can be expected in all certainty to find a narration unreliable. As the wider critical discourse has looked to tighten its collective understanding of what constitutes unreliability and how readers understand and negotiate unreliable narration, previously divided views have begun to be reconciled on the understanding that, rather than deferring to either an implied author or reader, textual signals themselves might be better understood as the most fundamental markers of unreliability. Consequently, taxonomies of unreliable narration based on exacting textual evidence have been developed and are now widely held as indispensable.   This thesis argues that while such taxonomies do indeed bring greater interpretive clarity to instances of unreliable narration, they also risk the assumption that with the right critical apparatus in place, even the most challenging unreliable narrators can, in the end, be reliably read. Countering the assumption are rare but telling examples of narrators whose reliability the reader might have reason to suspect, but whose unreliability cannot be reliably or precisely ascertained. With recourse to David Ballantyne’s Sydney Bridge Upside Down, this thesis proposes new terminological distinctions to account for instances of such radical unreliability: namely the ‘unsecured narrator’, whose account is therefore an ‘insecure narration’.  Ballantyne’s novel, published in 1968, has not received sustained critical attention to date, though it has been acclaimed by a small number of influential critics and writers in Ballantyne’s native New Zealand. This thesis argues that the novel’s long history of neglect is tied to the complexities of its radically unreliable narration. With social realism the dominant mode in New Zealand literature from the 1930s to the 60s, the obligation of the writer to accurately render—and critique—local conditions with mimetic accuracy was considered paramount. Even those critics to have argued the novel’s importance often maintain, largely or in part, a social realist view of the book’s significance. Doing so, however, fundamentally elides the complexity of the novel’s narrative machinery and to deeply ironic ends: for, this thesis argues, Sydney Bridge Upside Down deploys its insecure narration as a complaint against the limits of social realism practised in New Zealand. Its unsecured narrator, Harry Baird, slyly overhauls realist reference points with overtly Gothic markers and cunning temporal dislocations to thus turn social realism’s desire for social critique back on itself via radical unreliability.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Hamish Clayton

<p>The unreliable narrator is one of the most contested concepts in narrative theory. While critical debates have been heated, they have tended to foreground that the problem of the unreliable narrator is epistemological rather than ontological: it is agreed that narrators can be unreliable in their accounts, but not how the unreliable narrator ought to be defined, nor even how readers can be expected in all certainty to find a narration unreliable. As the wider critical discourse has looked to tighten its collective understanding of what constitutes unreliability and how readers understand and negotiate unreliable narration, previously divided views have begun to be reconciled on the understanding that, rather than deferring to either an implied author or reader, textual signals themselves might be better understood as the most fundamental markers of unreliability. Consequently, taxonomies of unreliable narration based on exacting textual evidence have been developed and are now widely held as indispensable.   This thesis argues that while such taxonomies do indeed bring greater interpretive clarity to instances of unreliable narration, they also risk the assumption that with the right critical apparatus in place, even the most challenging unreliable narrators can, in the end, be reliably read. Countering the assumption are rare but telling examples of narrators whose reliability the reader might have reason to suspect, but whose unreliability cannot be reliably or precisely ascertained. With recourse to David Ballantyne’s Sydney Bridge Upside Down, this thesis proposes new terminological distinctions to account for instances of such radical unreliability: namely the ‘unsecured narrator’, whose account is therefore an ‘insecure narration’.  Ballantyne’s novel, published in 1968, has not received sustained critical attention to date, though it has been acclaimed by a small number of influential critics and writers in Ballantyne’s native New Zealand. This thesis argues that the novel’s long history of neglect is tied to the complexities of its radically unreliable narration. With social realism the dominant mode in New Zealand literature from the 1930s to the 60s, the obligation of the writer to accurately render—and critique—local conditions with mimetic accuracy was considered paramount. Even those critics to have argued the novel’s importance often maintain, largely or in part, a social realist view of the book’s significance. Doing so, however, fundamentally elides the complexity of the novel’s narrative machinery and to deeply ironic ends: for, this thesis argues, Sydney Bridge Upside Down deploys its insecure narration as a complaint against the limits of social realism practised in New Zealand. Its unsecured narrator, Harry Baird, slyly overhauls realist reference points with overtly Gothic markers and cunning temporal dislocations to thus turn social realism’s desire for social critique back on itself via radical unreliability.</p>


Author(s):  
Hossein Aliakbari Harehdasht ◽  
Zahra Ekbatäni

In The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes portrays the mysterious workings of the human mind as it distorts facts towards the end of a self-image that one can live with. The protagonist in the novel deploys certain psychological defense mechanisms in order to protect himself from feelings of anxiety, only to experience even more profound anxiety due to his excessive use of them. The significance of the present paper lies in its novel view of the book. So far, the critique on the novel has mainly been focused on the workings of time on memory; however, the present paper investigates how psychological defense mechanisms blur the protagonist’s perception of reality and distort his memories. This paper also attempts to attract scholarly interest in the study of psychological defense mechanisms in the study of The Sense of an Ending which has so far been to the best of our knowledge overlooked


2018 ◽  
pp. 132-138
Author(s):  
М. І. Підодвірна

The results and achievements of the main schools and directions of naratology indicate the need to reread both well-known and recondite texts in order to spell out the meanings. We believe that the narrative analysis of prose by Victor Domontovich (the Ukrainian intellectual writer) is interesting and relevant. The article attempts to characterize the manifestations of the bias of an unreliable narato in the novel “Doctor Seraficus” based on the A. Nyuninga’s cognitive approach. A modern German researcher provides a set of tools that can supplemented for a multidimensional consideration of all ambiguities and contradictions in the text. An intelligent game that unfolds in the text manifests itself at different levels. V. Domontovych conducts the biggest game, the game with meaning through the pending authority of unreliable presenter. The text of the novel consists of abstract reflections, notes, dreams, illusions, fantasies, dreams and retrospective journeys. The main law of the text is the game. Irony and contradictions in the narrator’s words encourage the reader to feel dissonance, uncertainty. Therefore, in a narrative analysis, attention is focused on the speaker and who sees (the focal point). It was investigated that the artist Corvin is the narrator of the novel “Doctor Serafikus”, he tries to give as much as possible objectively the personal story. The motives for the unreliability narration based on the personal interest and bias of the character are determined. We identified the main symptoms of the unreliability of the narrator in the work, and the different levels at which the corresponding narrative is expressed, are highlighted. It is established that an unreliable narrative forces distancing itself from a narrator and takes everything that has been said with caution and detachment. Detailed narrative analysis of the work sheds light on the meanings, which for some reason masked, and allows you to establish artistic functions of an unreliable narrator. We believe that understanding this phenomenon makes it possible to make a comprehensive analysis of artistic text.


2005 ◽  
Vol 280 (16) ◽  
pp. 16019-16029 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archana Jalota ◽  
Kamini Singh ◽  
Lakshminarasimhan Pavithra ◽  
Ruchika Kaul-Ghanekar ◽  
Shahid Jameel ◽  
...  

Various stresses and DNA-damaging agents trigger transcriptional activity of p53 by post-translational modifications, making it a global regulatory switch that controls cell proliferation and apoptosis. Earlier we have shown that the novel MAR-associated protein SMAR1 interacts with p53. Here we delineate the minimal domain of SMAR1 (the arginine-serine-rich domain) that is phosphorylated by protein kinase C family proteins and is responsible for p53 interaction, activation, and stabilization within the nucleus. SMAR1-mediated stabilization of p53 is brought about by inhibiting Mdm2-mediated degradation of p53. We also demonstrate that this arginine-serine (RS)-rich domain triggers the various cell cycle modulating proteins that decide cell fate. Furthermore, phenotypic knock-down experiments using small interfering RNA showed that SMAR1 is required for activation and nuclear retention of p53. The level of phosphorylated p53 was significantly increased in the thymus of SMAR1 transgenic mice, showingin vivosignificance of SMAR1 expression. This is the first report that demonstrates the mechanism of action of the MAR-binding protein SMAR1 in modulating the activity of p53, often referred to as the “guardian of the genome.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 624
Author(s):  
Antonino Cirello ◽  
Tommaso Ingrassia ◽  
Antonio Mancuso ◽  
Vincenzo Nigrelli ◽  
Davide Tumino

The process of designing a sail can be a challenging task because of the difficulties in predicting the real aerodynamic performance. This is especially true in the case of downwind sails, where the evaluation of the real shapes and aerodynamic forces can be very complex because of turbulent and detached flows and the high-deformable behavior of structures. Of course, numerical methods are very useful and reliable tools to investigate sail performances, and their use, also as a result of the exponential growth of computational resources at a very low cost, is spreading more and more, even in not highly competitive fields. This paper presents a new methodology to support sail designers in evaluating and optimizing downwind sail performance and manufacturing. A new weakly coupled fluid–structure interaction (FSI) procedure has been developed to study downwind sails. The proposed method is parametric and automated and allows for investigating multiple kinds of sails under different sailing conditions. The study of a gennaker of a small sailing yacht is presented as a case study. Based on the numerical results obtained, an analytical formulation for calculating the sail corner loads has been also proposed. The novel proposed methodology could represent a promising approach to allow for the widespread and effective use of numerical methods in the design and manufacturing of yacht sails.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 295-307
Author(s):  
Will McNeill ◽  

Heidegger’s 1936 essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” is notoriously dense and difficult. In part this is because it appears to come almost from nowhere, given that Heidegger has relatively little to say about art in his earlier work. Yet the essay can only be adequately understood, I would argue, in concert with Heidegger’s essay on Hölderlin from the same year, “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetizing.” Without the Hölderlin essay, for instance, the central claim of “The Origin of the Work of Art” to the effect that all art is in essence poetizing, Dichtung, can hardly be appreciated in its philosophical significance without the discussions of both essence and poetizing that appear in the Hölderlin essay. This is true of other concepts also. The central concept of the rift (Riß)—the fissure or tear—that appears in “The Origin of the Work of Art” might readily be assumed to be adopted from Albrecht Dürer, whose use of the term Heidegger cites at a key point in the 1936 essay. Here, however, I argue that the real source of the concept for Heidegger is Hölderlin, and that the Riß is, moreover—quite literally—an inscription of originary, ekstatic temporality; that is, of temporality as the “origin” of Being and as the poetic or poetizing essence of art. I do so, first, by briefly considering Heidegger’s references to Dürer in “The Origin of the Work of Art” and other texts from the period, as well as his understanding of the Riß and of the tearing of the Riß in that essay and in its two earlier versions. I then turn to Heidegger’s 1936 Rome lecture “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetizing,” in order to show the Hölderlinian origins of this concept for Heidegger.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Zrinka Frleta

This paper examines ideological and philosophical premises of aestheticism, presented in Wilde's critical essays (The Critic as Artist and The Decay of Lying), and epigrams in the preface to the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which both offer a philosophical context to the novel. Aestheticism emphasized that art can not be subordinated to moral, social, religious and didactic goals, because its ultimate goal is art itself, l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake). „Art never expresses anything but itself.“ „All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals.“ „Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.“ „Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.“ (Wilde, 1891). The relations between art and reality (concealment of reality) and art and ethics (an ethical function of art) have been explored through the interaction of the characters of Basil Hallward and Sibyl Vane with Dorian Gray. The paper also examines the role of the artist, his morality in the process of creating and experiencing the work, and the influence of the work of art on the artist himself/herself.


Author(s):  
Anni Lappela

Mountains and City as Contrary Spaces in the Prose of Alisa Ganieva I analyze Alisa Ganieva’s novel Prazdnichnaia gora (2012) and her novella Salam tebe, Dalgat! (2010) from a geocritical (Westphal, Tally) point of view. Ganieva was born in 1985 in Moscow, but she grew up in Dagestan, in North Caucasia. Since 2002, she has lived in Moscow. All Ganieva’s novels are set in present-day Dagestan, not only in the capital Makhachkala but also in the countryside.  I study the ways the two main spaces and main milieus, the mountains and the city, oppose each other in Prazdnichnaia gora. I also analyze how this opposition constructs the utopian and dystopian discourses of the novel. In this high/low opposition, the mountains appear as the utopian place of a better future, and the city in the lowlands is depicted as a dystopian place of the present-day life. The texts’ multilayered time is also part of my analysis, which follows Westphal’s idea of the stratigraphy of time. Furthermore, the mountains are associated with the traditional way of life and the Soviet past. In this way, the mountains have two kinds of roles in the texts. Nevertheless, the city is a central element of the postcolonial dystopian discourse of Prazdnichnaia gora. In my opinion, Ganieva’s texts problematize referentiality, one of the key concepts of geocriticism. Whilst the city tends to be very referential, the mountains escape the referential relationship to the “real” geographical space.


Author(s):  
L. V. Korobko

The article analyzes features of the proper name of Ludwig van Beethoven as well as represents its intentional use in the process of verbalization of the phenomenon “Music” (based on the novel “A Clockwork” by Orange A. Burgess). On the basis of a stage-by-stage research three models of the proper name Ludwig van Beethoven within the anthroponomical field of the literary discourse of A. Burgess were allocated: MODEL I [Personal name]; MODEL II [Surname]; MODEL III [Surname + Work of Art]. The use of the model [Personal name] – Ludwig van is prepotent and reflects the main character’s personal attitude towards the composer. Functional meanings of the proper name are defined, 4 lexical portraits of Beethoven are allocated: physiological, psychological, emotional and intellectual. Positive and negative signs of Beethoven are expressed by means of evaluative lexicon and antinomies in the analyzed novel. The positive characteristic of the composer prevails, which is connected with the greatness of his figure and is motivated by the main character’s affection to Beethoven. Beethoven’s educational, noble features belong to positive signs. Negative signs of the composer’s personality are reflected in his emotional and intellectual portraits as he is represented as a gloomy, angry, mad person. In Anthony Burgess’s novel “A Clockwork Orange” both universal and specific features of Ludwig van Beethoven are represented. The universal features include physical characteristics of the musician (deafness, long flying hair, etc.), and also recognition of genius of the composer and his creations. Beethoven’s character belongs to the sphere of universal and specific features. The fact of the detached, lonely lifestyle of the musician, his severe, gloomy character, which was caused by his disease, is wellknown. Annoyance, rage, hidden threat, penetrating look are the specific features which are allocated to Beethoven by the author of the novel A. Burgess.


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