Allotropies of Authenticity with P. Ackroyd, J. Barnes and A. Carter

Abstract

This paper presents the attempts of three major contemporary British novelists at searching for the truth and the authentic, both at an existential level and at a formal one. With the advent of the Postmodernist aesthetic, there is no longer such a concept as absolute truth; nor is there an immanent authenticity, but a multitude of personal approaches to it - allotropies of a genuine authenticity.