Authenticity And Fictionality

Julian Barnes is an important representative of contemporary British literature.He is also known as the “British Literary Big Three” along with Martin Amis and Ian Mc Ewan.Lilock once said that Barnes’ literary vitality and courage are unparalleled among contemporary British writers.Barnes is comparable to Nabokov,Calvero and Kundera.Nothing to Be Frightened of is Barnes’ only family memoir.As soon as the novel was published,it attracted wide attention in the British literary circles.It was selected as one of the top ten best-selling English books in 2008 by the New York Times Book Review.This autobiographical novel with philosophical elements tells Barnes’ life experience from 20-year-old atheist to 60-year-old agnostic.The novel mainly shaped the image of Barnes,a fearless character.He has enthusiasm and wisdom,but he has repeatedly accused others of their stupidity,and he is frightened of death.The contradictions and contrasts of the character images in the novel have also attracted widespread attention from readers.While the studies on Barnes and his works lead the upsurge,there are still some limitations.Scholars tend to interpret the themes,writing techniques,and artistic features of Barnes’ works.However,there are few studies on the autobiographical nature of Barnes’ works using autobiographical theory,which need to be systematically sorted and summarized.This thesis is dedicated to the study of facts and fictions in the autobiographical novel Nothing to Be Frightened of from the perspective of autobiographical narrative.Based on the writer’s life experience,value orientation and time background,combined with autobiographical narrative theory,it discusses the fictional tendency of autobiographical novel from four aspects: psychological fiction,dialogue fiction,detail fiction and event fiction,so as to explore how does Barnes use rhetoric to sublimate real life experience into fictional literary works.This paper breaks through the mainstream research trend and broadens the research dimension of the evaluation of Barnes and his works.At the same time,the in-depth study of the fictionality and authenticity of autobiographical narrative will inject new vitality into its future development.