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WOJCIECH DRAG
Wrocław University
Abstract
This essay
examines the significance of religion in Staring at the
Sun (1986), A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters
(1989), England, England (1998) and Nothing to Be
Frightened of (2008). The emphasis of the discussion is
on the significance and purposefulness of religious belief
in an overtly post-metaphysical world. In all Barnes’s texts
one can trace a paradoxical conflict between two contending
attitudes towards religion. On the one hand, religion is
portrayed from the historical perspective as a cruel tool of
oppression or is simply dismissed as an obsolete fable. On
the other hand, it is perceived as a belief system which
promised ultimate meaning, fought off nothingness and was
necessary to sustain the illusion of a harmonious universe.
Ultimately, Barnes’s attitude towards his loss of religion
hovers between postmodern celebration and modernist
nostalgia.
Keywords:
Religion, Christianity, post-religious, classic art,
nostalgia, Englishness, childhood, death |
