MEMORY, UNRELIABLE NARRATION, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BILDUNGSROMAN IN JULIAN BARNES’S “THE SENSE OF AN ENDING”
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Abstract
The postmodern bildungsroman challenges the traditional understanding of growing up as a linear and objective process. This article examines the characteristics of the postmodern bildungsroman in Julian Barnes’s novel “The Sense of an Ending”. The study explores the transformation of the classic novel about identity formation within a postmodern narrative structure. Using genre analysis, narratological interpretation, and close reading, the study examines the novel’s non-chronological temporality, unreliable narration, and the relativity of memory and truth. In contrast to the traditional depiction of the protagonist’s life as a strictly chronological sequence, the narrative unfolds retrospectively and fragmentarily through the memories of the protagonist, Tony Webster. The analysis reveals that growing up in the novel is neither progressive nor harmonious, but retrospective, morally unsettling, and incomplete. Tony’s rethinking of his past reveals the instability of personal history and calls into question the possibility of a coherent self-formation. The findings suggest that Barnes reimagines the bildungsroman as a narrative of epistemological uncertainty rather than achieved integration, thus demonstrating the genre’s postmodern transformation.
How to Cite
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bildungsroman, postmodernism, identity formation, memory, unreliable narration, retrospective memory.
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