- I have a doctorate in contemporary literature at Birkbeck College and was a Teaching Fellow in British Studies at Har... moreI have a doctorate in contemporary literature at Birkbeck College and was a Teaching Fellow in British Studies at Harlaxton College between 2014-2016. I am now Module Leader in Liberal Arts on the International Foundation Programme at King's College London and am also the Resident Director of the Cornell Brown Penn UK Study Centre.edit
- Joseph Brookeredit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The reception of BS Johnson has always been divided between derision and admiration, often within the same critic. An experimental writer who rejected the term experimentalism, a writer of fiction who insisted that 'telling stories... more
The reception of BS Johnson has always been divided between derision and admiration, often within the same critic. An experimental writer who rejected the term experimentalism, a writer of fiction who insisted that 'telling stories is really telling lies' Johnson's treatment of the ...
Research Interests:
An examination of three Barnes novels which exhibit ‘incredulity towards metanarrative’ and yet are driven by the attempt to find alternative legitimating narratives, both at the diegetic level and in terms of their narrative form. I... more
An examination of three Barnes novels which exhibit ‘incredulity towards metanarrative’ and yet are driven by the attempt to find alternative legitimating narratives, both at the diegetic level and in terms of their narrative form. I identify the prototypical Barnesian protagonist as exhibiting this thematic concern with their combination of scepticism as to the possibility of objective truth and yet enduring conviction that its pursuit is an ethical necessity, a paradoxical state which produces an emotional condition of yearning, a conclusion I compare to those of Barnes on God in Nothing to be Frightened of. I consider Barnes’s meditation on the relationship between truth and storytelling, particularly in considering the term ‘Pure Story’, a term which appears in Flaubert’s Parrot which I argue carries connotations of both generic and ethical signification, concerns which are linked by Flaubert’s edict that ‘form is the thought of flesh itself’ suggests the profound interconnectedness of these two. Through an application of the theories of Michael Riffaterre in Fictional Truth, I argue that Barnes’s chameleon form is suffused with ethical and epistemological significance which together make up an authorial argument in favour of literature as the medium which tells us the most truth about life.