A POST-STRUCTURALIST DECONSTRUCTION OF NARRATIVE AND IDENTITY IN THE NOVELS OF JULIAN BARNES

Аннотация

This paper undertakes a post-structuralist reading of narrative and identity in Julian Barnes's novels Flaubert's Parrot and The Sense of an Ending. Employing theoretical concepts advanced by Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault, the study demonstrates how Barnes destabilizes conventional notions of truth, authorship, and subjectivity Through metafictional techniques, unreliable narration, and intertextual play, Barnes exposes narrative as an instable process in which identity is constructed, reconstructed and frequently deferred. The analysis argues that both novels enact deconstructive procedures: they reveal the contingency of meaning, the textuality of memory. and the ethical consequences of narrative misrecognition. By foregrounding the mechanics of storytelling, Barnes transforms reading into an interpretive practice that must accept uncertainty as intrinsic to textual and human life. Key words: post-structuralism, deconstruction, narrative, identity, metafiction