“우리는 과거를 어떻게 포착하는가?”: 줄리언 반즈의 『플로베르의 앵무새』 (“How do we seize the past?”: Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국현대영미소설학회
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· 저자명 : 김종석

초록

This essay aims to explore Julian Barnes's creative ideas about biography and historiography that feature prominently in Flaubert's Parrot. Barnes views the genre of biography with suspicion because he disapproves of the 'certainties' with which biographers describe lives. He creates in Flaubert's Parrot a new kind of biography which is hybrid, fragmentary, subjective, contradictory, and incomplete. First of all, Barnes raises doubts about the belief that biographical/historical truth is obtainable. The fact that the search for the authentic parrot remains an unsolved case indicates the difficulties of obtaining the truth of the past. What Barnes emphasizes through the 'Case of the Stuffed Parrot' is that "there are only truths in the plural, and never one Truth." Secondly, Barnes contests the notion that biography should be impersonal and objective. At the beginning of the novel, biographer Geoffrey Braithwaite seems to take a detached attitude toward Flaubert's life and work. But Braithwaite eventually reveals in the "Pure Story" chapter that he has brought his own personal agenda to the biography of Flaubert. The biographer's hidden agenda turns out to be his desire to understand his own wife's infidelity and death in relation to the fictional life of Emma Bovary. Braithwaite's autobiographical account of his own wife shows that the biographer/historian's personal and subjective elements often find their way into biography/historiography. Lastly, Barnes self-consciously challenges the traditional biography's reduction of the biographical subject to an essential self. Barnes approaches Flaubert's life story from such "lots of different unexpected angles" that he offers nothing but isolated and fragmented episodes. All these episodes, however, are not meant to add up to a complete picture of the subject. Simply put, Barnes refuses to believe in the conventional idea of the biographical subject as a rational and unified self. Rather, the image of Flaubert Barnes creates suggests that a human being has fragmented, contradictory, and unfinished identities.

영어초록

This essay aims to explore Julian Barnes's creative ideas about biography and historiography that feature prominently in Flaubert's Parrot. Barnes views the genre of biography with suspicion because he disapproves of the 'certainties' with which biographers describe lives. He creates in Flaubert's Parrot a new kind of biography which is hybrid, fragmentary, subjective, contradictory, and incomplete. First of all, Barnes raises doubts about the belief that biographical/historical truth is obtainable. The fact that the search for the authentic parrot remains an unsolved case indicates the difficulties of obtaining the truth of the past. What Barnes emphasizes through the 'Case of the Stuffed Parrot' is that "there are only truths in the plural, and never one Truth." Secondly, Barnes contests the notion that biography should be impersonal and objective. At the beginning of the novel, biographer Geoffrey Braithwaite seems to take a detached attitude toward Flaubert's life and work. But Braithwaite eventually reveals in the "Pure Story" chapter that he has brought his own personal agenda to the biography of Flaubert. The biographer's hidden agenda turns out to be his desire to understand his own wife's infidelity and death in relation to the fictional life of Emma Bovary. Braithwaite's autobiographical account of his own wife shows that the biographer/historian's personal and subjective elements often find their way into biography/historiography. Lastly, Barnes self-consciously challenges the traditional biography's reduction of the biographical subject to an essential self. Barnes approaches Flaubert's life story from such "lots of different unexpected angles" that he offers nothing but isolated and fragmented episodes. All these episodes, however, are not meant to add up to a complete picture of the subject. Simply put, Barnes refuses to believe in the conventional idea of the biographical subject as a rational and unified self. Rather, the image of Flaubert Barnes creates suggests that a human being has fragmented, contradictory, and unfinished identities.

참고자료

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