A New Self, History, and Truth: the postmodern quest in Julian Barnes’s ''Flaubert's Parrot'', ''A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters'', and ''Arthur & George''.

The process of discovering the past can be likened to the sleuth’s hunt for clues and traces which would lead him to find out “what really happened”. The historians and the biographer have to proceed in their investigations in a similar way. Materials and documents in the archive have to be researched and evaluated; false tracks have to be spotted and avoided; the possibility to discover new pieces of evidence must left open. Indeed, Flaubert’s Parrot was defined as an ‘intellectual whodunnit’, and a ‘kind of detective literary story’ by Andrzej Gasiorek and Marina Vaizey respectively (in Pateman, 2002: 23). Not only is the ‘Case of the Stuffed Parrot’ (Barnes, 1984: 216) a mystery to solve, but also Flaubert’s life itself is a mystery which will never be totally solved. Despite the almost obsessive research lead by Braithwaite and his thorough knowledge, there will always be areas of darkness and ambiguity which is impossible to clarify. Consider, for instance, the kind of relation possibly having existed between Flaubert and Juliet Herbert, or, even more telling, the very case of the parrot.
Braithwaite, the scholarly sleuth, failed to find the “true” parrot which sat on Flaubert’s desk and, similarly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a more active sleuth, could not find the “true” author of the mutilations and the writer of the libellous letters (provided they were the same person, or people). Indeed, Sir Arthur’s investigations lead him to a certain Royden Sharp, who seems to have all the requisites expected by a criminal: he was expelled from Walsall school (the key of which was found in front of the Vicarage door), he had a record of mischief, cheating, and forging letters, was sent to sea from 1896 to 1903 (the years the persecutions stopped), and worked in a cattle ship (therefore he knew how to handle animals). Unsatisfied with merely the facts, Conan Doyle welcomes also rumours and village talk, like the fact that Royden Sharp used to laugh like a maniac when the moon was full (Barnes, 2005: 407). Mrs Greatorex’s testimony is used as an indisputable evidence against Sharp, who showed her the instrument which was probably used for maiming the cattle. Sir Arthur, albeit eager to demonstrate George’s innocence, proves a rather incompetent detective: his desire to secure the horse lancet, in order to have concrete proof, proves to be selfdefeating.
Indeed, without it, all they had was just circumstantial evidence. They had a few facts, and they built a narration around them, to create a story which explains and demonstrates that Sharp is guilty in the ‘Statement of the Case against Royden Sharp’ (Barnes, 2005: 424). However, the very same accusatorial story had previously been constructed to explain and demonstrate that the culprit was George. The kind of narratives advanced by the Staffordshire Constabulary and by Sir Arthur respectively are both ascribable to the concept of ‘fabulation’ advanced in A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters: ‘the technical term is fabulation. You make up a story to cover the facts you don’t know or can’t accept. You keep a few true facts and spin a new story round them’ (Barnes, 1989: 109). [...]