Collective Memory And Personal Memory In Julian Barnes’s Elizabeth Finch

Abstract

Memory is a vital need for human being’s knowledge to survive in this world. Julian Barnes’s novel Elizabeth Finch (2022) is about the protagonist trying to write a biography with the help of memory. The protagonist, Neil tries to give a tribute to his late college teacher, Elizabeth Finch by writing a biography. Elizabeth Finch was an inspiring teacher and thinker. She was doing a research on Julian the Apostate. She died before completing it. Neil first tries to complete her research and in this journey he also tries to write her biography with the help of personal and collective memory. In this search he finds that memory and history are interrelated. Memory, in postmodern thought, is often depicted as fragmented, partial, and prone to revision. It does not serve as a reliable record of the past but rather as a narrative shaped by subjective experiences, emotions, and cultural contexts. The novel also brings out the struggles faced by the writers of biography. He finds, how a single falsified or incomplete information about anything would change the world’s perspectives. The novel makes the readers to raise the question, the reliability of memory. The paper tries to bring out the importance of memory and how it plays a major role in creating history.