The culture of imitation and the crisis of national identity in Julian Barnes' 'England England'

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 2,0, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: In recent years, the concept of Englishness has received a lot of attention, in popular culture as well as in academic circles. Very often music, popular literature, fashion and lifestyles seem to be based on a general idea of a standard Englishness which has become favoured not only in England or Great Britain itself, but all around the world. Few national identities are as thoroughly profiled in popular belief as the English, albeit those beliefs are often based on various wide-spread clichés about a nation, whose history has, in fact, always been marked by change. This has led to an academic interest in what about Englishness is cliché, what is really true and, above all, a definition of what Englishness is or may be; an issue that appears to be difficult, since even in terms of language Englishness is subject to a constant process of development and transformation, which is highly polarising some people, for instance, may welcome Multicultural London English as a new spoken variety, others reject it because to their minds, it replaces the original speech and ruins what they believe to be the 'real' or 'true' English. The first group may then question the term 'original', because a century ago the language that is considered original now may have been new and replacing what was considered original back then. The problem shown in this example roughly illustrates the problem in general: a loss of the original that people are yearning to find and to determine, a quest which seems to never come to an end, causing a state of crisis. This problem of authenticity is a recurrent motif in the work of Julian Barnes, who in his novel 'England, England' explores Englishness in particular, the nature of traditions, of history and of (national) identity, and in how far they are invented or constructed. This work will focus on how the process of constructing traditions and identities is depicted in the novel and address the problems and crises linked to identity, authenticity and truth as raised by Julian Barnes.