History as Story and Parody in Julian Barnes’s the Noise of Time

Abstract

This article analyses Julian Barnes’s The Noise of Time, a postmodernist parody of the Russian communist world, and shows that historical truth is turned into a story which is remembered with bitter irony and which offers various interpretations. Being nothing but a story, history, associated with the symbol of noise, becomes subject to parody. Emphasizing the role of irony in revealing the dramatic effects of the Russian communist past, this essay remarks that parody functions as severe criticism.

Keywords

• history
• irony
• parody
• story
• time