Title: Coming to terms with crisis : disorientation and reorientation in the novels of Ian McEwan /
Authors: Möller, Swantje.
Publisher: Winter,
Year: 2011
Subjects: McEwan, Ian Criticism and interpretation.; Ethics in literature.; Crises in literature.
Contents: Introduction -- Disorientation and reorientation in postmodernity: positions in philosophy, pscyhology, and literary theory -- Postmodernity as an age of disorientation: contingency and heterogeneity -- Orientation and identity: inescapable frameworks and the dialogical self -- Literature and ethics: texts as others -- Contingency and crisis: The child in time, Enduring love, and Atonement -- "The written word can be the very means by which the self and the world connect": storytelling as a means of orientation -- Intertextuality and the role of literary tradition -- "Two cultures": negotiating conflicting epistemological frameworks -- "The simple truth that other people are as real as you": taking perspectives, experiencing alterity -- Transitions and transformations: The innocent, Black dogs, and On Chesil Beach -- Leaving innocence behind: knowledge and orientation in The Innocent, Black dogs, and On Chesil Beach -- "Not quite the comfort it had been to a preceding generation": Englishness in transition -- Dealing with "civilization's worst moods": history, anamnesis, violence -- Mapping spaces, mapping selves -- Failure of communication and "the power of words to make the unseen visible" -- Self and society: The cement garden, The comfort of strangers, Amsterdam, and Saturday -- Order, disorder, and disorientation in The cement garden, the comfort of strangers, Amsterdam, and Saturday -- "Fascinating violations": power struggles and the imposition of order -- "Conspiracies of silence" and talking cures: dialogue as encounter with the other -- "When anything can happen, everything matters": responsibility, agency, and solidarity -- Conclusion.