PHYSICAL REPRESENTATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN JULIAN BARNES’S NOVEL “ENGLAND, ENGLAND”

Resumen

The search for the national identity is a central theme in Julian Barnes’s England, England (1999).
The article studies various aspects of the physical representation of the idea in the novel. On the one
hand, the landscape in the novel is tightly connected with the historical and pseudo-historical
meanings which make it an essential part of Barnes’s model of the national identity. On the other
hand, the novel recreates the process of physical reshaping of the national landscape as a metaphor
for reshaping the nation. The article proves that the three landscapes successively emerging in the
three parts of the novel are endowed with various degrees of symbolic meaning. The first part of the
novel presents the landscape of the childhood memories blended with the character’s emotional
reminiscences. The second part focuses on role the simulacrum landscape plays in the myth creation
as the quintessence of Englishness is materialised in the replicas of historic and cultural sites in the
theme park. In the third par, Anglia’s landscape is shown as devoid of any historical meaning for the
inhabitants of the island.