This paper examines the role of sexual violence in Ian McEwan’s novel The Innocent and its relationship to the author’s examination of the boundary between the political and the personal. Contextualizing the protago...This paper examines the role of sexual violence in Ian McEwan’s novel The Innocent and its relationship to the author’s examination of the boundary between the political and the personal. Contextualizing the protagonist Leonard Marnham’s violence against the heat of the geopolitical struggles of the Cold War, this study traces his transformation from an innocent technician to a violent agent of political and sexual aggression, and reads his attempted rape of his German lover, Maria, as a nexus between personal relationships and geopolitical struggles. It highlights how Leonard’s violence is a reflection of and at the same time a product of the postwar political landscape. By drawing on the body politic of sexual violence, it analyzes the feminized representation of Leonard, arguing that Leonard is both a perpetrator as well as a victim of the postwar political struggles. Hence the conclusion that sexual violence is employed by the author as a trope to dramatize the invasion of the political onto the personal, and the novel is a political novel that illustrates how the entanglement of international politics and private life can lead to a profound distortion of personal relationships, where the dynamics of power, dominance, and submission that define the public sphere can seep into and corrupt even the most intimate aspect of human interaction.展开更多
Wittingly concealing the father images in his novel Atonement(2001), McEwan creates the"absence"of traditional hegemonic masculinity, which is a conscious activity in a combined consideration of the figural ...Wittingly concealing the father images in his novel Atonement(2001), McEwan creates the"absence"of traditional hegemonic masculinity, which is a conscious activity in a combined consideration of the figural and thematic progress, the grim social context, as well as his anxiety of influence and identity. Although this manliness is effaced on the surface, regarding the powerful images within, male authority still keeps running through the whole work. Hegemonic masculinity"presents"in manifold transformed and metaphorical forms, invisibly dictating the development of the protagonists and plots. This paper, giving a masculine reading through R.W. Connell's lens, aims to analyze and crystallize McEwan's such male writing, and finally to reach his real concerns: to deconstruct patriarchal culture, to defy dominant discourse, and to build a new order that opens up a real equality and coexistence for both the two sexes.展开更多
As a newly developed theory, narrative ethics has its reasonability and advantages in that it can not only analyze either the contents or the forms of the texts, but also make an analysis of the combination of both co...As a newly developed theory, narrative ethics has its reasonability and advantages in that it can not only analyze either the contents or the forms of the texts, but also make an analysis of the combination of both contents and forms. This article, supported by James Phelan＇s rhetorical narrative theory as the theoretical base, attempts to explore and interpret narrative judgments and its implied ethics existing in The Child in Time by Ian McEwan so as to observe the hidden aesthetic orientation, the value judgments and the ethical intentions of the text and help to reveal the author＇s views of narrative ethics and aesthetics of the novel.展开更多
Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs reflects the anxiety and panic after the Second World War vividly with charming words.Based on Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs,many scholars have explored and acquired great achievements in trauma wr...Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs reflects the anxiety and panic after the Second World War vividly with charming words.Based on Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs,many scholars have explored and acquired great achievements in trauma writing and historical writing.Through analyzing the similarities of the heroine’s long-term neglected inner needs and the cruelly killed creatures in nature,this paper finds there is an intimate connection between female and nature in Black Dogs.However,instead of being in a constant state of repression,female and nature will fight back.To sum up,this paper attempts to make an ecofeminism interpretation of Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs.A conclusion may be reached that June’s spiritual awakening resonates with enhancement of nature’s power.展开更多
Hailed as“the greatest living novelist in the British Isles”,McEwan’s novel Saturday,published in 2005,is set in the cosmopolitan city of London.The story takes place on February 15,2003,when Europe is still covere...Hailed as“the greatest living novelist in the British Isles”,McEwan’s novel Saturday,published in 2005,is set in the cosmopolitan city of London.The story takes place on February 15,2003,when Europe is still covered by the haze of September 11.The London described by McEwan is full of fear of terrorist attacks.The city is in chaos and disorder,and emptiness and alienation are filled in the hearts of London citizens.This paper attempts to analyze the post-9/11 London cityscape in this novel,and to analyze the social status quo of London under McEwan’s description,so as to further interpret the social deformity and spiritual wastage in the novel.展开更多
基金supported by Guangdong Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Studies under Grant GD23WZXC01-16.
文摘This paper examines the role of sexual violence in Ian McEwan’s novel The Innocent and its relationship to the author’s examination of the boundary between the political and the personal. Contextualizing the protagonist Leonard Marnham’s violence against the heat of the geopolitical struggles of the Cold War, this study traces his transformation from an innocent technician to a violent agent of political and sexual aggression, and reads his attempted rape of his German lover, Maria, as a nexus between personal relationships and geopolitical struggles. It highlights how Leonard’s violence is a reflection of and at the same time a product of the postwar political landscape. By drawing on the body politic of sexual violence, it analyzes the feminized representation of Leonard, arguing that Leonard is both a perpetrator as well as a victim of the postwar political struggles. Hence the conclusion that sexual violence is employed by the author as a trope to dramatize the invasion of the political onto the personal, and the novel is a political novel that illustrates how the entanglement of international politics and private life can lead to a profound distortion of personal relationships, where the dynamics of power, dominance, and submission that define the public sphere can seep into and corrupt even the most intimate aspect of human interaction.
文摘Wittingly concealing the father images in his novel Atonement(2001), McEwan creates the"absence"of traditional hegemonic masculinity, which is a conscious activity in a combined consideration of the figural and thematic progress, the grim social context, as well as his anxiety of influence and identity. Although this manliness is effaced on the surface, regarding the powerful images within, male authority still keeps running through the whole work. Hegemonic masculinity"presents"in manifold transformed and metaphorical forms, invisibly dictating the development of the protagonists and plots. This paper, giving a masculine reading through R.W. Connell's lens, aims to analyze and crystallize McEwan's such male writing, and finally to reach his real concerns: to deconstruct patriarchal culture, to defy dominant discourse, and to build a new order that opens up a real equality and coexistence for both the two sexes.
文摘As a newly developed theory, narrative ethics has its reasonability and advantages in that it can not only analyze either the contents or the forms of the texts, but also make an analysis of the combination of both contents and forms. This article, supported by James Phelan＇s rhetorical narrative theory as the theoretical base, attempts to explore and interpret narrative judgments and its implied ethics existing in The Child in Time by Ian McEwan so as to observe the hidden aesthetic orientation, the value judgments and the ethical intentions of the text and help to reveal the author＇s views of narrative ethics and aesthetics of the novel.
文摘Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs reflects the anxiety and panic after the Second World War vividly with charming words.Based on Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs,many scholars have explored and acquired great achievements in trauma writing and historical writing.Through analyzing the similarities of the heroine’s long-term neglected inner needs and the cruelly killed creatures in nature,this paper finds there is an intimate connection between female and nature in Black Dogs.However,instead of being in a constant state of repression,female and nature will fight back.To sum up,this paper attempts to make an ecofeminism interpretation of Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs.A conclusion may be reached that June’s spiritual awakening resonates with enhancement of nature’s power.
文摘Hailed as“the greatest living novelist in the British Isles”,McEwan’s novel Saturday,published in 2005,is set in the cosmopolitan city of London.The story takes place on February 15,2003,when Europe is still covered by the haze of September 11.The London described by McEwan is full of fear of terrorist attacks.The city is in chaos and disorder,and emptiness and alienation are filled in the hearts of London citizens.This paper attempts to analyze the post-9/11 London cityscape in this novel,and to analyze the social status quo of London under McEwan’s description,so as to further interpret the social deformity and spiritual wastage in the novel.
