Liu i
Phillip Liu
Mrs. E. Richardson
British Literature
12 November 2012
A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters: Barnes’ Unorthodox Criticism of History
Thesis: In A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Barnes criticizes history and its
undeserved authority over the accounts of time by using multiple forms of irony, narrative
voices, and connecting elements.
I. Forms of irony
A. Verbal irony
B. Situational irony
II. Narrative voices
A. Vast arrangement of voices
B. The lecture-style first-person voice
III. Connecting elements
A. The woodworm as a threat to history
B. The woodworm’s Ark story
Liu 1
Phillip Liu
Mrs. E. Richardson
British Literature
12 November 2012
A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters: Barnes’ Unorthodox Criticism of History
Julian Barnes’ A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, a novel made of a series of short
stories and an essay, changes its narrative mode between each chapter and plays through the
reader’s mind as many types of stories: a drama, a documentary, or a personal narrative. The ten
and a half chapters cover many topics, ranging from a woodworm’s perspective of Noah’s ark to
an art history analysis of The Raft of Medusa (Theodore Gericault’s painting which is included in
the text). Although the plot and narrative voice of each chapter change throughout the book,
Barnes includes a satiric edge and recurring elements to connect the novel. Through the plots,
narration and tone of each chapter, the novel raises questions concerning the legitimacy of
history. In A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Barnes criticizes history and its
undeserved authority over the accounts of time by using multiple forms of irony, narrative
voices, and connecting elements.
Barnes’ use of verbal irony begins in his title, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters.
Understatement in the title claims that a history of the world may be summed up in as little as ten
and half chapters or approximately 300 pages, a daunting prospect. Rather than The History of
the World – a title used by Sir Walter Raleigh – critic Brian Finney points out that Barnes
substitutes “an indefinite for a definite article” (49). Finney goes on to conclude that “[Barnes’]
is merely a history among many possible histories of the world” (49). The woodworm narrator of
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chapter one – The Stowaway – also uses understatement to describe Noah as “not a nice man”
(Barnes 12) but then labels him as “a monster … a puffed-up patriarch” (12). The woodworm
continues the verbal irony when describing Noah’s caretaking methods with incongruity: “As
soon as he saw the plovers turning white, he decided that they were sickening, and in tender
consideration for the rest of the ship’s health he had them boiled with a little seaweed on the
side” (14). Noah never took into account that the plovers’ feathers naturally turned white every
winter, and decides to bring the species into extinction for the sake of the other animals’ health,
or rather his own hunger – a tenderly considerate act. The woodworm continues to criticize
Noah’s eating animals of the Ark. Shortly after Noah’s sons “proposed at the family council that
if you had the elephant and hippopotamus, you could get by without the behemoth…There were
complaints about getting behemoth for dinner every night and so – merely for a change of diet –
some other species was sacrificed” (14). The understatement shown downplays the significance
of the sacrifice of another animal species as well as the behemoth’s extinction. The woodworm
describes another extinct animal, the unicorn, as “strong, honest, fearless, impeccably groomed
and a mariner who never knew a moment’s queasiness” (16). When the noble unicorn saves
Ham’s wife from falling into the God-damned seas, he received “fine thanks … for his valour”
and was “casseroled one Embarkation Sunday” (16). This description of the noble unicorn’s
treatment uses overstatement, because the gratitude the unicorn receives seems more of a
punishment to the reader. As evidenced in these examples, Barnes uses verbal irony to satirize
Noah’s hero status in the Ark story.
The use of verbal irony continues throughout the novel, scattered through the chapters. In
the third chapter – The Wars of Religion – overstatement is used to prosecute the woodworms,
referred to as the “bestioles” (63) – a Latin term for bug or insect. The court case begins with the
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“Petition des habitans” (62), where the “inhabitants of Mamirolle in the diocese of Besancon …
most pressingly and urgently petition the court to relieve and disburden [them] of the felonious
intervention … which have brought upon [them] God’s wrath” (62). In this quotation, the
inhabitants label the woodworm’s eating of the Bishop’s throne as “felonious intervention” (62)
and request the excommunication of the bestiole population responsible for the “devilish work”
(64). Next, the prosecution, “Plaidoyer des habitans,” (62) describes the inhabitants’
victimization, “humble faith,” (63) and “unimpeachable honesty” (63) by saying they are “too
trepid of this court to let anything but the clear fountain of truth flow from their mouths” (63).
The overstatement used in these quotations satirizes the prosecution. The court moves on to
accuse the woodworms by overstating their natural act of eating wood by describing with
exclamation the incident in which Besancon’s bishop, Hugo, lowers himself onto the throne only
to fall through the undermined wood: “Oh malevolent day! Oh malevolent invaders! And how
the Bishop fell … being hurled against his will into a state of imbecility” (64). This quotation
only adds to the criticism for the prosecution by parodying the Bishop’s fall. In describing the
inhabitants examination of the crime scene, the prosecution says they discovered “in the leg that
had tumbled down like the walls of Jericho a vile and unnatural infestation of woodworm” (64)
and that the criminals had “secretly and darkly gone about their devlish work, [and] so devoured
the leg that the Bishop did fall … from the heavens of light into the darkness of imbecility” (64).
Besides overstatement, there is also ironic incongruity when the woodworm’s infestation
is described as “unnatural,” because woodworms do naturally infest wood. By the end of the
documented trial, “the villager’s successful prosecution of the woodworms who end up being
excommunicated … is ironically undercut by the conclusion in which the closing words … have
been eaten by the woodworm” (Finney 63). In this chapter Barnes satirizes documented history.
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Despite the inhabitants’ – the winning party’s – written version of history being the one read,
they are portrayed as overly absurd in their attack on the woodworms. Daniel Candel states, “A
History [of the World in 10 ½ Chapters] often criticizes the one-way presentation of history [and
that] History is presented … as being on the side of the winners and thus not taking cognizance
of the losers or the common people” (255). Finney backs Candel in saying the woodworm’s
destruction of the final words in the document represents another side to the story: “The survival
of the woodworm convincingly asserts the existence of an alternative, repressed version of
events” (64). Through The Wars of Religion, Barnes parodies a real event in history and points
out an alternate story.
Used as a convention of satire, situational irony is also utilized throughout Barnes’ novel.
In the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, the Ark evokes a sense of protection for the animals of Earth
and Noah’s family, but in A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters’s first chapter, the
woodworm narrator describes the Ark as “more like a prison ship” (4). In the second chapter –
The Visitors – the cruise ship on which Franklin Hughes serves as a tour guide, the Santa
Euphemia, is described with comfort and regularity. The “elderly but comfortable ship” (38)
serves a “predictable clientele” (38) for “three weeks [of] pleasure and relaxation” (38), but the
cruise makes an ironic turn as Arab terrorists take over the tour. At first, Franklin Hughes’ job
requires him to teach the tourists of culture in the area, but the terrorists force him to become the
deliverer of bad news in giving the apprehended tourists an ironic “lesson in cultural history that
they neither sought nor paid for” (Buxton 70) in which he must explain the reasons for their
captivity. In chapter three, the woodworms are put on trial in ecclesiastical court in an attempt to
excommunicate them, but ironically animals are not members of the church. The woodworm’s
representative points this out in asking, “how … can it be lawful to excommunicate a beast of the
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field or a creeping thing from upon the earth which has never been a communicant of the Holy
Church?” (68) In the fourth chapter – The Survivor – the sometimes-narrator, Kath, sees the
world as corrupted by men and their “fabulation” (109). But as the chapter continues, the reader
ironically begins to questions Kath’s state of mind rather than the minds of the men. In chapter
six – The Mountain – Amanda Fergusson climbs Mount Ararat, the landing site of Noah’s Ark,
as a pilgrimage to challenge her father’s atheist spirit. Ironically, “Spike ‘Touchdown’ Tiggler
discovers Amanda’s abandoned remains 136 years – and three chapters – later” (Buxton 77),
exclaiming, “We have ourselves a miracle!” (274), and mistaking Miss Fergusson’s 136-year-old
skeleton for that of Noah’s thousand-plus year-old skeleton. In the novel’s tenth and final chapter
– The Dream – the unnamed narrator awakes in a contemporary version of heaven where
everyone gets what he wants. The irony of this chapter exists in the narrator’s dissatisfaction
with his customizable heaven and everything that he wants. The narrator asks his heavenly
assistant, “And what sort [of heaven do] they want on the whole?” (298) She answers, “they
want a continuation of life … but … better, needless to say” (299). Finney points out, “What that
turns out to be in practice is principally golf, sex, shopping, and meeting famous people, all of
which activities reveal their underlying banality as the millennia pass by” (57). The critic
continues in saying that the narrator and the rest of contemporary heaven’s inhabitants ironically
become “so bored that they opt to die off for a second time” (58). Using these many examples of
situational irony, Barnes creates a satire in many of the chapters in his novel.
As another tool in satirizing history’s authority, “Barnes uses a bewildering variety of
narrative voices for the books different episodes” (Finney 52) to “unsettle the reader’s
confidence about the difference between truth and fiction, between history and story” (Moseley
112). As an example of this unsettling, Kath in The Survivor tells her story in a present-tense
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first-person narrative but is “framed and interspersed” (Moseley 114) with a third-person narrator
which makes it impossible for the reader to know which voice is true. These different voices tell
different stories. When Kath wakes up in a hospital bed with men interrogating her, the stories
narrative follows her first-person narrative conversation: “I replied, still victorious. ‘So of course
I’m not on the island?’… ‘And how do you explain that I remember very clearly everything
that’s happened from the news of the war breaking out…?’ ‘Well the technical term is
fabulation. You make up a story to cover the facts…’” (108-109). This dialogue is followed by
the third-person narrator whose story does not match the first-person narrator’s: “She made a
decision not to speak to the men again… She had learnt how to shut her eyes in her
nightmares…When her skin got bad and her hair started falling out, her mind tried to think up an
alternative explanation. She even knew the technical term for it now: fabulation” (111). Through
these examples, the reader can see reasons not to trust Kath’s account.
As another example of this unsettling, the woodworm narrator of the first chapter offers
many validations of his word as truth: “When I recall the Voyage, I feel no sense of obligation;
gratitude puts no smear of Vaseline on the lens. My account you can trust” (4). And when telling
the story of the unicorn’s extinction, the woodworm adds on, “I can vouch for that. I spoke
personally to the carrier-hawk who delivered a warm pot to Shem’s ark” (16). The woodworm
provides overzealous validations ironically causing the reader to question woodworm’s story.
The eighth chapter – Upstream! – uses a single voice made of many letters and telegrams sent
from a middling actor to his girlfriend followed by no responses. Finney claims, “Barnes
accurately captures the clichés, lack of punctuation, and poor syntax that reveal [the actor’s]
derivative mind” (53). The text confirms Finney’s claim: “I said to Fish do you have kids, he
said yes they’re the apple of my eye. I put my arm round him and gave him a hug just like that.
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It’s things like that that keep everything going, isn’t it?” (211) Barnes uses the actor’s crude
writing techniques to parody the recording of events, or history. Each chapter speaks differently,
and the varying voices calls for “an acute awareness on the part of the reader of the presence of
narrativity and its unavoidable role in all forms of historical discourse” (Finney 59). The
attention that Barnes’ multi-voiced novel brings to its narrators awakens suspiciousness on the
readers’ part to also question the narrators of history.
Barnes also uses a narrative voice that directly addresses the reader in the half chapter –
Parenthesis – and the second half of chapter five – Shipwreck. Both of these narrators pose
rhetorical questions to the reader and explain to the reader in a lecture-style tone the importance
of two major aspects in history, art and love. In Shipwreck the narrator asks in regards to the
Medusa sinking, “Why did it happen, this mad act of Nature, this crazed human moment?” (125)
He follows up, “Well at least it produced art. Perhaps, in the end, that’s what catastrophe is for”
(125). In Parenthesis, the narrator talks extensively on love: “When love fails us, we must still go
on believing in it. Is it encoded in every molecule that things fuck up, that love will fail? Perhaps
it is. Still we must believe in love, just as we must believe in free will and objective truth” (244).
On “objective truth,” the narrator explains, “[W]e must still believe that objective truth is
obtainable; or we must believe that it is 99 per cent obtainable; or if we can’t believe this we
must believe that 43 per cent objective truth is better than 41 per cent. We must do so, because if
we don’t we’re lost” (243-244). In these discourses on art and love, Barnes asserts that art allows
humans to showcase a view on history while love forms the way in which man must observe or
view history – with objectivity. In chapter four, Kath’s low expectations for her “little venture”
(92) do not impede her determination because “[s]he just thought you had to try it” (92). By “it”
the narrator alludes to the search for truth. The literary critic, Finney, states, “love … represents
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our personal truth. But that truth bred of subjectivity can best be articulated by art” (66).
Furthermore this voice is used to highlight Barnes’ suggestive argument for art and love.
Although most of the narrators’ voices in A History of the World in 10 ½ may not earn the
reader’s trust, Barnes uses the first person voice – possibly his own voice – to call attention to his
solution for the problems presented by corrupt historical documentation and representation.
At first the varying voices of A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters seem like random
collection of stories, but the reader soon recognizes the collection “seem[s] to overlap [with]
strange links [and] impertinent connections” (240). These connections tie together the novel’s
varying chapters. The woodworm’s ark story, which opens the book, persists throughout the rest
of the chapters, weaving its way through history just as the woodworms hollowed their way into
the Ark’s walls. In chapter three, they eat away the ending of the papers which document their
excommunication. When the actor from chapter eight writes to his girlfriend, he mentions the
woodworm’s threat: “he puts the letters into a plastic bag so they won’t get eaten by beetles or
woodworm of whatever” (197). In Project Ararat, Spike Tiggler ironically mentions the threat of
the woodworms, trying to push aside doubts of the Ark’s existence: “[the Ark] couldn’t have
rotted or been eaten by termites, because God’s command to find [the Ark] clearly implied that
there was something left” (266). Through these examples, the woodworms present a threat
history in the novel.
Furthermore, the first chapter’s woodworm narrator retells the Ark story differently from
the biblical one that most readers recognize – an alternative view on the same subject – and its
voice echoes through the other chapters as the Ark is mentioned or suggested. In The Visitors,
Franklin Hughes alludes to the boarding of the Ark’s creatures as many couples board the Santa
Euphemia: “The animals came in two by two” (33). In The Survivor, Kath takes two cats, Paul
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and Linda, with her as she boats away from her disillusioned view of society. The third-person
narrator hints at the Ark in this chapter, intentionally discounting the arrival of “some goodlooking fellow … with two dogs on board[,] then a girl with two chickens, a bloke with two pigs,
and so on” (92). When the St. Louis of Three Simple Stories suggests dropping off 250 of the
937 Jewish immigrants, it faces an ethical predicament similar to one on Noah’s Ark: “How
would you choose the 250 who were to be allowed off the Ark? Who would separate the clean
form the unclean?” (184). Barnes ties together his ten and half chapters with connections –
references and allusions to the woodworms and the Ark – that suggest an alternate history.
Barnes includes connections for a reason. Buxton writes, “History, the woodworm
suggests, reflects the interests and constructions of the victors: tradition transmits the accounts of
the “chosen” survivors” (61). But the woodworm’s presence – the loser’s presence –, however
indistinct, exists and cannot be ignored. This repressed version of events – the woodworm’s
voice – serves as a “‘footnote to history, as subversion of the given’” (Finney 70). The
woodworm, its story, and its perpetual existence throughout the novel represents the “voices
echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories”
(240). In Parenthesis, the narrator asserts that humans “keep a few true facts and spin a new story
round them [echoing the men of chapter four]. Our panic and our pain are only eased by soothing
fabulation; we call it history” (240). Barnes uses the novel-tying connections as an example of
repressed versions of history and explains the human tendency to skew the truth, thus
discrediting history’s authority.
A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, Barnes’ complex novel, speaks for those that
have no voice – the losers of history. By using verbal and situational irony, Barnes parodies
history as a one-sided story in which the only story is the winner’s story. Barnes’ highlights the
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significance of having multiple sides to a story by utilizing a wide-variety of narrative voices and
story-telling modes. Connecting these multiple voices and varied stories as a single parody of
history are references and hints that weave through each and every chapter from the first. Using
this unorthodox technique to write his novel, Barnes provides a criticism for the authority of
history.
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Works Cited
Barnes, Julian. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. New York: Knopf, 1989. Print.
Buxton, Jackie. "Julian Barnes's Theses on History (in 10 1/2 Chapters)." Contemporary
Literature 41.1 (2000): 56 - 87. Literary Reference Center. Web. 12 Sept. 2012.
Candel, Daniel. "Julian Barnes's A History of Science in 10 1/2 Chapters." English Studies
82.3 (2001): 253 - 261. Literary Reference Center. Web. 12 Sept. 2012.
Finney, Brian. "A Worm's Eye View of History: Julian Barnes's A History of thw World in 10
1/2 Chapters." Papers on Language & Literature 39.1 (2003): 49 - 70. Literature Resource
Center. Web. 14 2012.
Moseley, Merritt. Understanding Julian Barnes. Columbia, S.C.: U of South Carolina P, 1997.
Print.