Narrative Desire and Historical Reparations: Three Contemporary British Authors By Timothy S. Gauthier Dr. Beth Rosenberg, Examination Committee Chair Associate Professor of English University of Nevada, Las Vegas British novelists since Walter Scott have exhibited an interest in history, but this discursive affinity has transformed itself into a veritable obsession in the fiction of the last two decades. Indeed, a concern with and distrust 0/ history and historiographic projects is often hailed as a defining characteristic of postmodernism. And while writers of "new historical novels" cannot be said to form a movement as such, the predominance of such texts reveals the presence of communal concerns, and a readily identifiable strain of literary production that addresses the circulation of mutual symptoms, beliefs, and anxieties as a response to living in this particular moment in history. Adopting and adapting the theories of Hayden White and Peter Brooks, 1 highlight various types of "narrative desire" that drive both narrators and readers in their emplotment of history. Examining three representative novels A. S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance, Ian McEwan's Black Dogs, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children -

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Escape into innocence: Ian McEwan and the nightmare of history

Narrative desire and historical reparations: Three contemporary British authors

During the last twenty-five years, literary critics have become increasingly aware of the complexities surrounding the relationship between the so-called two cultures of science and literature. Instead of regarding them as antagonistic endeavours, many now argue that the two emerge from the common ground of language, and often deal with and respond to similar questions, although their methods of doing it are different. While this thesis does not suggest that science should simply be treated as an instance of discursive practices, it shows that our understanding of scientific ideas is to a considerable extent guided by the employment of linguistic structures that allow genres of science writing such as popular science to express arguments in a persuasive manner. In this task figurative language plays a significant role, as it helps create a close link between content and form, the latter not only stylistically supporting the former but also frequently epitomizing the philosophy behind what is said and establishing various kinds of argumentative logic. As many previous studies have tended to focus only on the use of metaphor in scientific arguments, this thesis seeks to widen the scope by also analysing the use of other figures of speech. Because of its important role in popular science writing, figurative language constitutes a bridge to literature employing scientific ideas. While popular science employs figurative language to enhance its rhetoric and literary qualities, such literature portrays science by using its own techniques of representation, with the rhetoric of popularized accounts evident in the portrayals. By a comparative analysis of contemporary popular science writing and literature, this study discusses how the two often reciprocally affect each other’s means of representation while approaching shared topics, such as identity and knowledge, thus together contributing to the process of signification through which scientific ideas are given their human meaning and relevance.

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Rhetoric and Representation : Exploring the Cultural Meaning of the Natural Sciences in Contemporary Popular Science Writing and Literature

This essay reads Ian McEwan's Black Dogs as “literature that sets out to transform history by bearing witness” (Shoshana Felman, “Camus' The Plague” 108). It argues this is achieved in large part by means of the novel's dialogic engagement with three intertexts: the classical genre that is pastoral, Arthur Koestler's “The Yogi and the Commissar,” and Albert Camus's The Plague.

Pastoral and Plague: Bearing Witness to “The Fundamental Problem of Evil” in Ian McEwan's Black Dogs

Ian McEwan's ”Saturday” is a Condition of England novel inspired by the collective fear of destruction embodied in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In this paper I explore the way in which McEwan extends his distinctive engagement with confrontation and destruction through his recollection of historical incidents. McEwan's strategy in recollecting and measuring fear in historical moments, usually in the form of Henry Perowne's soliloquies, provides a chance to reflect upon the contemporary moment and to estimate possible developments of current crises. If fear is something unexpectable, unmanageable, and unimaginable, then recalling memories of past fears will constitute a route plan orienting us towards an understanding of what we are now (by knowing what we were before) and what we will become (by excluding what we will not become).This paper attempts to read fear as represented in McEwan's works in light of risk and fear theories. As this paper argues that fear is unpredictable and unpreventable, it also reveals a social and historical dimension to its complexity. I use Maurice Halbwach's theory of collective memory critically to clarify McEwan's representation of fear in this post-9/11 novel, Saturday. Successive resurgences of historical incidents reconvene a post-9/11 traumatic memory. A collective sense of urgency brought about by the lurking presence of past incidents turns out to intensify the presence of pressing dangers. In this way, personal memory becomes a major site to which a sense of insecurity is summoned and transformed into fleeting moments of fraternity in the wake of disasters. Most importantly, recalling memories of chaos and fear presents a chance for communication, compassion, and reconciliation because it evokes a sense of concurrence which we all inhabit and in which we all survive.

London is “Waiting for Its Bomb“:History, Memory, and Fear of Destruction in Ian McEwan's “Saturday“

This article investigates McEwan's poignant figurative use of ideas from the New Physics, his testing of their availability to quotidian reality, and determines to what extent and with what results-wonder, illusion, dementia, psychosis-the protagonist's behaviour is affected by a quantum mindset. An attempt is made to identify and define the kind of worldview and time-concept, physical or metaphysical, which is ultimately upheld by the novel's narrative structure and style, and to ascertain how far these are rooted in the Newtonian tradition of empirical realism which the book's theoretical discourse challenges. Time-reversal and parallel worlds theory are considered in the context of the novel's millenial-dystopian political vision.

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New physics, old metaphysics: quantum and quotidian in Ian McEwan's The Child in Time

https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/ariel/article/download/31458/25538