This paper will focus on the problem of the representation of reality, one of the most problematic issues in postmodern novels. This problem reflects the postmodern questioning of Realism and its ideological assumptions of authority, absolute truth, o...
This paper will focus on the problem of the representation of reality, one of the most problematic issues in postmodern novels. This problem reflects the postmodern questioning of Realism and its ideological assumptions of authority, absolute truth, or universality, and so on. As an anti-Realist text, Julian Barnes` Flaubert`s Parrot challenges these assumptions of liberal humanism. This paper examines how Flaubert`s Parrot subverts the Realist ideas and their literary conventions by focusing on the problem of understanding and perceiving reality and its importance in finding the meaning of life (or life`s phenomena). For this examination three issues will be investigated: 1) the problem of representing history; 2) the problem of narrativity; and 3) the value of fictionality. Besides this, this paper will also explore the symbolic meaning of the parrot`s voice in this work and show how it confronts Gustave Flaubert`s realist claim of novelistic impersonality and objectivity. The examination of these issues will show that Realism`s tenet of the impartial representation of reality is found to be the closure of the meaning of reality in Flaubert`s Parrot.