Representation,Transformation And Appropriation

The British contemporary writer Ian McEwan(1948-)has been widely acclaimed for exquisite technique and in-depth inquiry into human nature since his debut in the 1970s.From his early short stories with thematic concern on horror and taboo subjects to the recent metanarrative fiction set in contemporary socio-historical background,McEwan exhibits narrative vicissitudes in technique and rhetorical effect,whose thematic retrospection also transfers from moralistic critique within text to the ethical mediation on the range of narrative itself.During the writing over 30 years,McEwan maintains his narrative emphasis on psychological delineation and ethical inquiry,and expands the exploration of psychological trauma motif.Most of his protagonists endure various traumatic events with different identities of victim,witness or perpetrator,displaying divergent syndromes of post traumatic stress disorder.McEwan appropriates the divergence of traumatized characters into narrative progression of trauma text,situating them respectively into three-scope narrative context of trauma representation,trauma narrative and confessional writing,each correlating to the narrative identity of character,narrator and "implied author".This narrative designation foregrounds the multi-layered narrative ethics with reciprocal reference between textual theme and narrative strategy.The trauma victim's solitude and depression,the witness' cowardice and regret,as well as the perpetrator's narcissism and cunning underlie the narrative psychological settings in McEwan's trauma fiction.The traumatized characters are contextualized as the subjects of ethical exploration respectively in the three-scope narrative framework of trauma representation,trauma transformation and trauma appropriation.McEwan's insight and critique of human nature disperse in his multi-level trauma writing,indicating his inquiry into the possibility of traumatized people's ultimate psychological relief.His narrative settings range from individual and social trauma,historical and collective trauma,as well as the metaphorical trauma of"implied author" and "narrative reader" in the perspective of Rhetorical Narratology.Due to the inadequate analysis of McEwan's narrative manipulation of trauma motif in present research,this dissertation aims for epitomizing the feature and orientation of his trauma writing with comprehensive and systematic textual exploration,to expose his ethical attitude beneath the self-conscious narrative in the procedure of diversified trauma restoration.Theoretically backboned with trauma study,narratological approach and ethical criticism,this study targets McEwan's six novels with trauma motif since the 1980s,and attempts to sketch out his evolvement in narrative technique,rhetorical effect and narrative ethics during the procedure of trauma contextualization.The textual comparison of novels with similar trauma narrative context provides an overview of McEwan's stylistic and thematic transition during 30 years,in which the narrative vicissitudes in narrative discourse,focalization and structure epitomize his attiudinal change toward the accessibility to trauma reconciliation.This dissertation is composed of 3 chapters.Chapter One concerns two novels narrated from the third-person omniscient perspective,The Child in Time(1987)and Saturday(2005),in which the protagonists share the role of victim obsessed with individual and social trauma.The post traumatic stress intensifies in various narrative discourses to envisage the victim's reflective psychological conscious.The consistent haunting traumatic memory appears in the representation of traumatic scenes,pointing to what Cathy Caruth terms as "the belatedness of trauma" in the extension of narrative chronotope.McEwan's stylistic experiment,for instance,the grammatical and semantic ambiguity in free indirect discourse,directs to his inward turn to narrative representation of trauma in which the traumatized characters' psychological mediation surpasses the detailed depiction of trauma aftermath.The thematic focus in these two novels shifts from narrative restoration of traumatic events to subjective retrospection on contemporary socio-historical environment,and the change in the traumatic context highlights McEwan's anxiety about the inaccessibility to individual's trauma recovery under the social unease after 9/11 terrorist attack.Chapter Two deals with two first-person memoirs,Black Dogs(1992)and Enduring Love(1997),in which the unreliable narrative of the trauma witnesses accords with Ruth Leys' proposition that transformation of trauma is inevitable because of the discrepancy between traumatic memory and narrative memory.The multi-layered focalization,affiliated to the dominant first-person focalization,displays the divergence of narrative memory from traumatized characters who experience similar catastrophe,further exposes the manipulative function of personal ethical position in narrative reconstruction.The trauma assimilation from self to other,or from individual to community,discloses the narrative subject's psychological variations.McEwan's narrative turn from the historical restoration of collective trauma to the concentration on narrativity of trauma undercuts the reliability of witness' memoir,implicating his suspicion of the therapeutic efficiency of trauma narrative.Chapter Three tackles with McEwan's recent metanarrative novels—Atonement(2001)and Sweet Tooth(2012),to discuss the probability of trauma appropriation in narrative synthesis.Based on Dominick LaCapra's ethical inquiry into the performativity of redemptive writing,this chapter analyzes the psychological paradox in the textual "implied author" or the trauma perpetrator indeed,whose confession and self-defense impenetrate the whole procedure of tentative redemptive writing.The framed narrative structure exposes the implicit narrative intention beneath narrative ambiguity,making McEwan's critique of human nature perceptible in the ironic text and reader's narrative judgment.The recent novel Sweet Tooth sustains and develops the metanarrative style in Atonement,accordingly,the perpetrator's post traumatic psychological appropriation transfigures into narrative appropriation for textual reconstruction,to which adheres McEwan's disapproval of the redemptive function of confessional writing.Since his debut in the literary world in the 1970s,McEwan has ameliorated the exploration of narrative ethics with synthetic concern of narrative technique,rhetorical effect,and reader's reading experience.With a panoramic view of McEwan's main novels with trauma motif,this dissertation attempts to point out that McEwan has progressively moved forward to self-contemplation of narrative ethics in the procedure of narrative reconstruction of trauma,compared with his primary pursuit of realistic mimesis of post traumatic syndromes.Simultaneously,his narrative focus transits to the ethical self-scrutiny of traumatized characters with different identities,therefore,McEwan 's moralistic critique of selfishness and cowardice in human nature emerges from the two-dimensional exploration in textual theme and narrative progression,intensifying his compassion for the inaccessibility to trauma reconciliation in contemporary socio-historical environment The transference of narrative subject from textual "implied author" to "narrative reader" also hints reading ethics in metanarrative context,reflecting McEwan's tentative configuration for the reading paradigm of postmodern literary works.