It started off simply enough. I really admired the novels of Julian Barnes and wanted to make them the subject of my master's thesis for an M.A. degree in English. The original idea came to me back in 1995, when my friend James Katowich loaned me a copy of Flaubert's Parrot, certain I'd like it. But due to a misguided (and short lived) move to Philadelphia and a switch from the M.A. program to an M.Ed. program, the thesis got put on the back burner.

When you've finished everything but your doctoral disertation, you're said to be All But Disertation (ABD). I don't think there's an equivelent term for being All But Thesis, but perhaps they should invent one. But to make a short introduction shorter, after finishing up my M.Ed., I felt guilty for not ever having finished my M.A., so I finally put my nose to the grind stone, polished it up, and defended it successfully in late April of 2001.

For the benefit of people studying Barnes' fiction, I'm posting a PDF version of my thesis here for your pleasure. It's in three parts:

A word about copyright: This is my original work and should be treated as such. Please don't misrepresent it as your own work. If you do use it in your scholarship, please cite the source.

We are proud to be featured among the other dissertations and theses at julianbarnes.com.