ABSTRACT: Julian Barnes, a famous contemporary British writer, won the 2011 Man Booker Prize with The Sense of an Ending. The works of Julian Barnes always focus on reminiscence and history, The Sense of an Ending is no exception. The novel is composed of two reminiscent narratives of the narrator Tony. By recalling the past, he had achieved the soul inquiry and the life understanding, which is full of humanistic care. Exquisite narrative skill is one of the bright spots of The Sense of an Ending. By analyzing this novel from two aspects: postmodernist narrative and the historical narrative, I attempted to explore narrative skills of this novel. Firstly, this paper presents the salient features of postmodernist narrative and analyzes the detail reflection of these characteristics in this novel, by pointing out these features are vital to text analysis; secondly, the paper discusses the historical narrative of this novel, analyzes the construction features of the historical narrative as well as its fictionality part. Then explain the reasons and significance of these two features.

 The unique way of narrative and reminiscence make The Sense of an Ending an exceptional innovative. Through the perspective of the narrator Tony, people re-acquire themselves with history, and re-examine their self-awareness. Life is limited, but its meaning continues and will never come to an end. 

Key Words: The Sense of an Ending; narrative; postmodernist narrative; historical narrative

Content

摘要：

Abstract:

Introduction-1

1.The Postmodernist Narrative in The Sense of an Ending-3

1.1 The Development of The Postmodernist Narrative-3

1.1.1 The Truth of The Narrative Content in The Postmodernist Narrative-3

1.1.2 The Fictionality of The Narrative Content In The Postmodernist Narrative-5

1.2 The Effects of Two Kinds of Narrative Contents In The Sense of an Ending-6

1.2.1 Giving a New Angles Towards The Narrator-6

1.2.2 The Fictionality and The Constructive Function of The Narration-7

2.The Historical Narrative In The Sense of an Ending-9

2.1 An Brief Introduction to The Historical Narrative-9

2.2 The Historic Feature of Narrative Content In The Sense of an Ending-10

2.2.1 The Fictive Part of The Historical Narration In Novel-10

2.2.2 The Constructive Function of Historical Narrative In Novel-11

2.3 The Relationship Between The Historical Narrative and The Novel-12

2.3.1 The Effects of The Historical Narrative to The Historical Event-13

2.3.2 The Effects of The Historical Event to The Historical Narrative-13

2.3.3 The New Meaning of The Novel Created by The Historical Narrative-14

Conclusion-16

Bibliography-18

Acknowledgments-20