England, England by Julian Barnes.

Authors just like Barnes refuse to consider and represent History like a linear process, following an exactly date, period, a specific time. They open themselves to have a confrontation with different worlds, cultures and ideals.

For this reason, reading the novels, I can choose my position, thinking and valued which is that closer to me.

They look at the concept of history in a different way. It doesn't care if the historical fact has happened or not, the best process is to find out various interpretations about it. You should need interpreter and re-create the history .it sometimes happens that something has lied ..even facts about religious arguments. Everything has his one history but the knowledge of it not implies an absolute true.  You should understand the actually culture by his different representations that find reconciliation with the past.

Therefore, can we know the past just thanks the present or can we understand the present thanks the past! These are questions that post modernism wants to find answer.

For instance the Historiographic methafiction accepts the real fact that past has existed but it exists because there some written mark. Hence you should need interpreter these marks in order to become facts. The aim of authors is to build a story from which has a lot of True.

Knowing the past does not only mean to record or tell it but above all construct it as well.

As martin Heidegger told: a boundary is not something that finishes but as Greeks recognize the boundary is what something begins from something before it... Borders separate and join at the same time .it can seem contradictory .They imply a limit but the possibility of crossing as well. For this reason we need to arrive to a new mentality, a new art of present.

ENGLAND; ENGLAND

The novel is written in three sections. The first and the last entitled England and Albion are short and tell about the life of Marta Cochrane from her childhood to her old age.

Marta lives in a small village in south of England. The story begins with memory: what s your first memory? I don t know. It s not as remember the first bra or first lover and so on. Memory is not a thing.

She s an only child who has a good time doing puzzle of the countries of England. Then, her father uses to keep one and only at the end to give it back again. What we know for sure is she loves the Agriculture Show, her desire to grow vegetables and to know various kinds of them. We have some information about her period at school and the strange way to teach history. Barnes criticizes the way to learn history, to learn historical dates by heart or act like nursery rhymes .others information about religion...when she pray she uses to change words. This means that as Barnes she doesn't believe in God. After that her parents split up a like every child for her it's real traumatic. He went out without giving back the piece of the puzzle: Nottinghamshire, a big disappointment. When she is 25 she meets again him. she ask to him for the piece but her father forgot it .from that moment she decides to not have any more memory about her childhood .it could seem a good way in order not suffer anymore. This is one of the possibilities we can do about the past. Twist and change it as we want in order to remember what we love. Our Marta actually says that she has not memory considered has suffered and deleted them. With them she constructs a puzzle and it doesn't matter if they are existed like real facts or not. They are just like a hard shell, a way to defend herself. it's like when we wear a mask in front of others, not showing to them our real weakness.

The middle and longer section is England, England. She is set in a next and closer future tells the tale of sir jack pitman who try to realize a copy of the actual England in a tourist ENGLAND IN THE ISLE OF WHITE.

Marta is part of the team who will try to realise this absurd and audacious project. Marta now is 40. She has got a degree in history. Pitman introduces immediately a question can seem ambiguous .what's real? We can realize the second important theme of the novel: the connection between authenticity and copy .The aim of pitman is to build a copy of England with some of the places, monuments, squares that everybody knows, that is typical of being English. Hence, to recreate all of those aspects those are typical of its History and Identity including the royal family too.

Marta's life follows the history of England. One of the characters says that the actual England is going to fall out. England has changed, it is going to loose his main political and economical power. Today it has just the name. That's all. The old England doesn't exist anymore with his wealth, his power and so on. What she has never lost is his tradition and his individuality. Marta put together her puzzle and Pitman too putting together main aspects to be considered English. 

To realize this project Pitman asks his team to write what they consider to be link ENGLAND; English.

We find a list full of many things. In the end, Pitman, change it deleting what is considered in bad way: snob, hypocrisy. Some elements that instead belong must to be changed, transformed in a new, modern key that could fascinate and attract modern tourist. An arduous task that bring inevitably to destruction of his own Identity, his own Essence.

All that is not easy, in particular, as regard as old legends like that of Robin Hood with his whole group who steal rich people in order to survive poor people.  There is also the problem of the Royal family that will never accept to move there. It will happen giving them more money, not paying taxes and assuring them more privacy.

Pitman in order to explain better his project calls an intellectual .He explains that most of people prefer the copy to the real England because it gives more Emotion. It should be as when we prefer listen music by cd instead to go directly to see a live concert. But in this case, it is not to have one identical copy but one in which, pitman, separate every thing that is history from the reality making it Simulacra just to get more money. With this Barnes wants to say the simulacra is a big threat in order to understand what is real or not. Hence if, everything can be changed and manipulate Marta understand that this project is false too. What instead seem real and give us optimism is the love story between Marta and Paul.-Marta made for him real things and the same for Marta.

Optimism by their feeling but love doesn't save the world from pretence ...In fact, in the end, Paul sells himself to pitman in order to obtain more fame and money.

Marta is not like him. Marta is clever, honest, she still believes in love. She works for the project but she doesn't totally in it.

The world in which she lives and the story is not imminent.

Barnes maybe wants to let us know about the future. The world and people are changed but in the opposite direction .in the future what will be important are not family, friends, small values but fame. Money, power and maybe feeling and love will be an optional.

It becomes even Independent and it s not considered just a simply copy.

It s in competition with the old England.

In the end it finishes to replace the real England. Nobody wants to go in England, it not attract nobody .England finishes instead to develop himself to regress in every sense, politically, economically and so on. Instead to go on, it goes back.

In reality, the project of pitman was to become the only owner of the isle. After he would dismiss every people. But Marta and Paul discover something in order to blackmail him.

Now Marta takes the palace of pitman.

Her management is different, more human, and more sentimental. If she has to dismiss some one she doesn't manage but not only because of sentimentalism but, especially because she remained attached to the idea of the authenticity that the same project wants eliminate. She is nostalgic of the reality.

The episode of Robin Hood causes her expulsion of the project. Robin Hood complains about food, privacy and starts to steal and requires real fighter.

Marta is obliged to call police but to tourists everything seems organized, projected and not real.

Now it doesn't manage to distinguish real and pretence. This raid is useless because policemen go to the hospital and pitman fined the reason to have again the control.

He corrupts Paul and Marta remains alone. After that Marta goes to Church where she finds again a bit of happiness.

The visit to the graveyard on the Isle is what still remains of a piece of real.

In fact, after the corruption of money, the fact to obtain always more power, even the discovery of love and feelings appear false. What is for sure authentic and real is only the death. It can be changed, transformed and hence simulacra.

We can speak about this not of utopia but dystopia that is the opposite of utopia.

Utopia would create a better world, an ideal world that tend to Absolute Good, where Happiness, Harmony rule.

Dystopia is the contrary of every single thing that can be in positive .here what   rule is only bad habits, corruption, couldn't-care-less attitude and as the only feeling the pessimism.

The last part is again about Martha. After her dismissal, she spends many of her years travelling around the world.

Then she decides to move in the Old England that it changed name and become Albion.

We don t need to imagine how it is. It lost his brightness and instead to go on, to develop, the future England reflects the past.

It has regressed, no progress, no tourism, no family Royal... just only agriculture. England doesn't exist anymore. Old England had lost his own Identity and History.

In the end the first become the official Patria instead the other sink into oblivion, regresses and so on. Maybe the presence in the last page of the book is important.

I'm referring to the rabbit that run carefree, fearless and quietly confident of its territory.

Marta watches it for a few seconds, and then she begins to descend the hill. Can it represent Hope? Hope for a better future?

Maybe but it depends of us. We are the society in which we live.

We are able, if we always want it, to change what is wrong in the world.