Modern and Postmodern Subject Positions: Unreliable Narrators in The Good Soldier and The Sense of an Ending

Volume 6, Issue 6, December 2022     |     PP. 366-386      |     PDF (293 K)    |     Pub. Date: December 4, 2022
DOI: 10.54647/sociology84937    80 Downloads     4589 Views  

Author(s)

Shahriar Khalili Mobarhan, M.A student, University of Torino
Nahid Fakhrshafaie, Assistant Professor, Department of English Studies, Shahid Bahonar Univeristy of Kerman, Kerman, Iran
Rahimeh Rouhparvar, Assistant Professor, Department of English Studies, Shahid Bahonar Univeristy of Kerman, Kerman, Iran

Abstract
The present study aims to study unreliable narrators in Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending and Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier. As Barnes prompts the reader to read his novel in the light of Ford's novel, a comparison between Barnes's unreliable narrator and Ford's unreliable narrator proves inevitable. This study examines the differences between the unreliable narrator of a modern novel and that of a postmodern novel to see if these differences could be accounted for by the fundamental differences between modernism and postmodernism. In order to see how subject positions reflect social orders, this study draws on the theoretical backgrounds of modernism and postmodernism and the debate between Habermas and Lyotard. It studies modernism in the light of fragmentation, scientific method the simultaneous rejection and invocation of the past and relates postmodernism to fluid identity, the uncertainty of history and anti-humanism. This study concludes that John Dowell represents all the certainty of an individual who has a comfortable self- image and knows everything about himself, the people around him and the world in which he lives, while Tony Webster is a postmodern fractured character who is split between his younger self and older self, unable to tell fact from fiction. The postmodern unreliable narrator undermines the notion of personal and historical knowledge. In spite of all his defects and uncertainties, Tony Webster is more sympathetic than Dowell because he does not try to manipulate the reader. He does not want to record the past objectively, but reminds us that history is a construction.

Keywords
modernism, postmodernism, subject positions, unreliable narrator

Cite this paper
Shahriar Khalili Mobarhan, Nahid Fakhrshafaie, Rahimeh Rouhparvar, Modern and Postmodern Subject Positions: Unreliable Narrators in The Good Soldier and The Sense of an Ending , SCIREA Journal of Sociology. Volume 6, Issue 6, December 2022 | PP. 366-386. 10.54647/sociology84937

References

[ 1 ] Alber, jan, et al. "Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models". Narrative., Vol. 18, No. 2. 2010. pp. 113-136.
[ 2 ] Berman, Jessica. 2001.Modernist Fiction, Cosmopolitanism, and the Politics of Community. Cambridge University Press. 2001.
[ 3 ] Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press, 1994.
[ 4 ] Barnes, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. UK: Jonathan Cape, 2011.
[ 5 ] Bell, Michael.“The Metaphysics of Modernism”. The Cambridge companion to Modernism, edited by Michael Levenson. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
[ 6 ] Bertens, Hans. “The Debate on Postmodernism” in International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice edited by Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema.. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 1997, pp, 3-15.______1997. “The Sociology of Postmodernity” in International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice edited by Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 1997, pp. 103-118.
[ 7 ] Booth, Wayne C. Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961.
[ 8 ] Bradbury, Malcolm and James McFarlane, Modernism 1890-1930. Penguin Books, 1976.________ “The Name and Nature of Modernism” in Modernism 1890-1930 edited by Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. Penguin Books, 1976, pp. 19-55.
[ 9 ] Brown, Dennis and John Theodore. The Modernist Self in Twentieth-Century English Literature: A Study in Self-Fragmentation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989.
[ 10 ] Browning, Robert. Selected Poems, edited by John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, Joseph Phelan. London: Routledge, 2010.
[ 11 ] Chatman, Symour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornel University Press, 1978.
[ 12 ] Curthoys, Ann and John. Docker. Is History Fiction? Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
[ 13 ] Ferry, Luc. Renaut, Alain. 1990. French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism. University of Massachusetts Press, 1990.
[ 14 ] Fludernik, Monika. “Histories of Narrative Theory (II): From Structuralism to the Present” in A Companion to Narrative Theory edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Wiley, 2005, pp 36-59.
[ 15 ] Fokkema, Douwe. “The Semiotics of Literary Postmodernism” in International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice edited by Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema. John Benjamins Publishing, 1997, pp 15-42.
[ 16 ] Ford, Ford Madox. The Good Soldier. The Floating Press, 1915.
[ 17 ] Green, Robert. Ford Madox Ford: Prose and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
[ 18 ] Habermas, Jurgen. The Theory of Communicative Action. London: Beacon Press, 1981. _______________. “Modernity Versus Postmodernity”. Trans. Seyla Ben-Habib. New German Critique. No. 22. 1981, pp. 3-14.________________Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of the Society. Vol. 1.Trans. Thomas A. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.
[ 19 ] Hasak-Lewy, Todd Sam.. Between Realism and Modernism: National Narratives in Modern Hebrew Fiction. Berkely: University of California Press, 2002.
[ 20 ] Helgeson, James. “Is the Author Responsible: Artistic Agency in Humanist and Antihumanist Perspectives” in Early Modern Humanism and Postmodern Anti-humanism in Dialogue edited by Jan Miernowski. 1-23. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. pp. 1-23.
[ 21 ] Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. “Modernism and Science” in Modernism edited by Astradur Eysteinsson and Vivian Liska.. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007, 383-403.
[ 22 ] Herman, David. “Histories of Narrative Theory (I): A Genealogy of Early Developments” in A Companion to Narrative Theory edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Wiley, 2005, pp. 19-35.
[ 23 ] Herman, Luc. Vervaeck, Bark. Handbook of Narrative Analysis. U of Nebraska Press, 2005.
[ 24 ] Houtman, Dick. Aupers, Stef. 2010. “Religions of Modernity: Relocating the Sacred to the Self and the Digital” in Religions of Modernity: Relocating the Sacred to the Self and the Digital. Eds. Stef Aupers and Dick Houtman. Leiden: Brill, 2010. pp. 3-31.
[ 25 ] Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. Routledge, 1988.
[ 26 ] James, David. Modernist Futures: Innovation and Inheritance in the Contemporary Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
[ 27 ] Jameson, Frederick. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge, 1981.
[ 28 ] Kenuen, Brat. “Living with Fragments: World Making in Modernist City Literature”. Modernism. Eds. Astradur Eysteinsson and Vivian Liska. Vol I. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007.
[ 29 ] Kolb, David. Postmodern Sophistications: Philosophy, Architecture and Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
[ 30 ] Kovacs, Andras Balint. Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema :1950-1980. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
[ 31 ] Leitch, Vincent B. Postmodernism: Local Effects, Global Flows. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.
[ 32 ] Levenson, Michael. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
[ 33 ] Lewis, Jeff. Cultural Studies: The Basics. London: Sage Publishers, 2002.
[ 34 ] Lobb, Edward. “The Definition of Modernity in The Good Soldier”. Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, edited by Rossita Terzieva-Artemis. Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2018.
[ 35 ] Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction. London: Penguin Books, 1992.
[ 36 ] Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
[ 37 ] Lyotard, Jean Francois and Jean-Loup Thebaud. Just Gaming: Trans. Wald Godzich. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
[ 38 ] Malamud, Randy. The Language of Modernism. Ed. A. Walton Litz. AnnArbor: UMI Research Press, 1989.
[ 39 ] Maples, Simon. The Postmodern. London: Routledge, 2005.
[ 40 ] Martens, Gunther. “Revising and Extending the Scope of the Rhetorical Approach to Unreliable Narration” in Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel, edited by Elke D’hoker and Gunther Martens, Walter de Gruyter.2008, pp. 77-105
[ 41 ] May, Tim and Jason L. Powell. Situating Social Theory. 2nd ed. Berkshire: Open University Press, 2008.
[ 42 ] McFarlane, James. “The Mind of Modernism” in Modernism 1890-1930, edited by Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, London: Penguin Books, 1976. pp. 71-93.
[ 43 ] McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. Routledge, 1987.
[ 44 ] McRobbie, Angela. Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
[ 45 ] Nichol, Bran. The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
[ 46 ] Nicholas, William, ed. Modernity and Religion. Waterloo. Wilfrid Lauriel University Press, 1987.
[ 47 ] Nigro, Frank G. “Who Framed the Good Soldier: Dowell’s Story in Search of a Form”. Studies in the Novel. Vol 24. No. 4, 1992. Pp. 381-391.
[ 48 ] Nunning, Ansgar. “Reconceptualizing the Theory, History and Generic Scope of Unreliable Narration: Towards a Synthesis of Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches” in Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel, edited by Elke D’hoker and Gunther Martens, Walter de Gruyter, 2008, pp. 29-77.
[ 49 ] Ozumba, Gidfrey O. “Lyotard and Postmodernism”. Critical Essays on Postmodernism, edited by Godfrey O. Ozumba, Patrick J. Mendie, Michael Ukah & Christopher A. Udofia. Uk: Edioms Reseach and Innovation Center, 2017.
[ 50 ] Pensky, Max. “Historical and Intellectual Contexts”. Jurgen Habermas: Key Concepts, edited by Barbara Fultner. Durham: Acumen. 2011, pp. 54-73.
[ 51 ] Peterson, James. “Postmodernism and film” in International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice, edited by Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema. John Benjamins Publishing, 1997, pp. 141-149.
[ 52 ] Piciucco, Pier Paolo. “The Aging Confessor and the Young Villain: Shadowy Encounters of a Mirrored Self in Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending”. AperTo- Archivio Istituzionale Open Access dell’Universita di Torino, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2318/1693352.
[ 53 ] Segal, Eyal. “The Good Soldier and the Problem of Compositional (Un) Reliability”. Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier: Centenary Essays, edited by Max Saunders and Sara Haslam. Leiden: Brill, 2015, pp. 63-77.
[ 54 ] Shields, David. Reality Hungers: A Manifesto. London: Penguin, 2010.
[ 55 ] Stevenson, Randall. Modernist Fiction: An Introduction. University Press of Kentucky, 1992.
[ 56 ] Tanyan, Baysar. “Denying the Narrator: Jullian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending”. English Studies: New Perspectives, edited by Mehmet Ali Celikel and Baysar Taniyan. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
[ 57 ] Tholfsen, Trygve R. “Postmodern Theory of History: A Critique”. Memoria Y Civilizacion. Vol 2. Anuario de Historia. 1999. PDF.
[ 58 ] Wollaegaer, Mark. Modernism, Media and Propaganda; British Narrative from 1900 to 1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
[ 59 ] Woods, Tim. Beginning Postmodernism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999.