"There is great unrest”

complex might be less emotionally involving than other areas of literature. It considers
that perception in the context of a discussion of the relation between memory and
affect in English literature and culture, referring to stereotypical constructions and
counter-constructions of English reserve and of its representation in both canonical
and contemporary (and postmodern) English writing. In its argument, the paper
refers initially to contrasting concerns arising from the work of critics like Eliot,
Richards, Leavis, Edmundson and Belsey but focusing its attention more particularly
on Julian Barnes’s memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008) and his novel
e Sense of an Ending (2011). From that scrutiny of Barnes’s work, a number of
insights emerge into the complex relations between memory, emotion, postmodernism
and Englishness.