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Family and Relationships in Ian McEwan's Fiction

Between Fantasy and Desire

Tomasz Dobrogoszcz

The book provides a lucid analysis of all Ian McEwan fiction published to date, from his 1975 debut short stories up to the 2016 novel Nutshell, spanning forty years of his literary career. Apart from a general discussion of McEwan’s works, the study offers a uniform focal point: it concentrates on one of the key issues taken up by the writer – the aspect of relationships between partners and between family members. As the book demonstrates, the novelist employs interpersonal relations to establish a pertinent context in which he can dramatically portray the process of identity formation in his characters. Throughout his fiction, McEwan consistently uses references to psychoanalysis, either veiled or direct. The proposed book investigates the novelist’s oeuvre through the lens of the psychoanalytic theory developed by Jacques Lacan. The approach used makes the book useful both for readers well familiar with this apparatus, and for those who need introduction to Lacanian psychoanalysis and such of his concepts as “desire,” “fantasy,” “the symbolic order” or “ the Name-of-the-Father.”

Lexington Books

Pages: 264 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4985-3987-6 • Hardback • February 2018 • $129.00 • (£99.00)

978-1-4985-3988-3 • eBook • February 2018 • $122.50 • (£95.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Modern / General, Literary Criticism / Popular Literature

Family and Relationships in Ian McEwan's Fiction

Between Fantasy and Desire

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The book provides a lucid analysis of all Ian McEwan fiction published to date, from his 1975 debut short stories up to the 2016 novel Nutshell, spanning forty years of his literary career. Apart from a general discussion of McEwan’s works, the study offers a uniform focal point: it concentrates on one of the key issues taken up by the writer – the aspect of relationships between partners and between family members. As the book demonstrates, the novelist employs interpersonal relations to establish a pertinent context in which he can dramatically portray the process of identity formation in his characters. Throughout his fiction, McEwan consistently uses references to psychoanalysis, either veiled or direct. The proposed book investigates the novelist’s oeuvre through the lens of the psychoanalytic theory developed by Jacques Lacan. The approach used makes the book useful both for readers well familiar with this apparatus, and for those who need introduction to Lacanian psychoanalysis and such of his concepts as “desire,” “fantasy,” “the symbolic order” or “ the Name-of-the-Father.”

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 264 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-4985-3987-6 • Hardback • February 2018 • $129.00 • (£99.00)

978-1-4985-3988-3 • eBook • February 2018 • $122.50 • (£95.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Modern / General, Literary Criticism / Popular Literature

Author

Tomasz Dobrogoszcz is assistant professor of English at the University of Lodz

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part 1: Beginnings
Chapter 1: Disturbing Proximity and Grotesque ProportionsWhen It Comes to First Love, Last Rites and In Between the Sheets
Chapter 2: The Oedipal Siblingsin The Cement Garden of Eden
Chapter 3: Anchoring The Comfort Of Strangers in the Sadistic Paternal Superego
Part 2: Developments
Chapter 4: The Child in Time and the Child Within
Chapter 5: The Precariousness of The Innocent Childish Masculinity
Chapter 6: The Traumatic Encounter with Black Dogs and the Real
Chapter 7: Enduring Love, Childlessness, Unreliability, and the Enigma of the Other’s Desire
Part 3: Maturity
Chapter 8: The Path Toward Deathvia Amsterdam
Chapter 9: The Recognition of Otherness in the Fantasyof Atonement
Chapter 10: The Pacifying Saturday Fantasy of a Non-pacifist
Chapter 11: The Big Other Is Watching YouEven On Chesil Beach
Part 4: Recent Fiction
Chapter 12: Solar and the Unbearable Heaviness of Desire
Chapter 13: The Opalescent Sweet Tooth of Deceptive Manipulation
Chapter 14: How The Children Act toEffect the Split Between Psychological and Symbolic Identity
Chapter 15: Craving the Mother’s Desirein a Nutshell
Conclusion: Love Will Tear Us Apart?

Reviews

An excellent blend of critical explication and close analysis; Dobrogoszcz deftly and originally combines thought-provoking elucidation of the novels with a consistent theoretical perspective throughout.
— Peter Childs

Dobrogoszcz’s study of McEwan’s fiction is marked by an exemplary scope and focus on detail. It offers exciting and up-to-date readings of individual texts and of the oeuvre as a whole. This study is a stimulating guide to the complexities of character relationships in McEwan’s work. Dobrogoszcz’s Lacanian approach is presented with such lucidity and relevance that readers who read texts from other perspectives will be convinced and enlightened.
— David Malcolm, University of Gdansk

Dobrogoszcz’s up-to-date book about family and amorous relationships in Ian McEwan’s work is a fine addition to McEwan studies. Building on existing McEwan criticism, his explorations are comprehensive, rigorous, and provide powerfully insightful interpretations of the role of emotions and (post-)Freudian psychology in the work of one of today’s finest living writers. Dobrogoszcz reads McEwan from the early short stories through Nutshell, showing that parental inadequacy, selfishness and other behavioral shortcomings are a recipe for disaster, often tragic, always human.
— Sebastian Groes, University of Wolverhampton

Family and Relationships in Ian McEwan's Fiction

Between Fantasy and Desire

Tomasz Dobrogoszcz

Family and Relationships in Ian McEwan's Fiction

Between Fantasy and Desire

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