- The University of New Brunswick, English, AlumnusUniversity of Alberta, English and Film Studies, Alumnusadd
- Narrative Ethics, Martin Amis, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Graham Swift, Ian McEwan, and 28 moreMargaret Drabble, Postmodernism, Narrative, Modern American Literature, Postmodern Fiction, Ethics, Hermeneutics, Continental Philosophy, Contemporary British Literature, English Literature, Paul Ricoeur (in ) Philosophy, Film Studies, Paul Ricoeur, Narrative and Identity, John Updike, Siri Hustvedt, Hermeneutics and Narrative, Richard Kearney, Paul Auster, Continental Philosophy of Religion (Philosophy), Ingmar Bergman Films, Marilynne Robinson, W.G. Sebald (Area Studies), W.G. Sebald, Melancholy, Trauma Studies, Literature and Trauma, and Literatureedit
- My area of expertise broadly covers 20th Century English fiction, as well as narrative ethics and continental philoso... moreMy area of expertise broadly covers 20th Century English fiction, as well as narrative ethics and continental philosophy.
My PhD thesis examined an unusual brand of self-conscious narrative by focussing on the work of Ian McEwan. What makes this minority metafictional style especially unique is not only its continuing presence in the works of some of the late-twentieth century’s pre-eminent writers -- Martin Amis, Graham Swift, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Margaret Drabble, among them -- but also its ethical character. For this reason, the kind of metafiction being discussed should not be conflated with more traditionally ideological forms which attest to their own fictionality in the name of undermining ‘realist’ illusions. Rather, I argue that self-conscious narrative, in the case of McEwan and others, is often utilised in order to reassert an ethical complex that lies between author and reader, text and world. The fundamental differentiation being made, then, is that between a properly postmodernist metafiction and what might be considered a restorative metafiction that works, in a self-justifying manner, towards an affirmation of narrative ethics. For this latter style of metafiction, storytelling does not mark the beginning of a free-play of signifiers or a dispersal of constituting fictions, but rather the beginning of a dialogical and ethical relationship between texts and readers; of stories not just being told from one to another, but by one for another.
Using the work of Ian McEwan as a test case, my dissertation argued that the contemporary British novel has explored the same self-Other dynamics that underpin the work of Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Zygmunt Bauman while also exploring the ethical propensity of narrative in ways akin to the postmodern hermeneutic theories of Ricoeur and Richard Kearney.edit
Research Interests:
"A collection of interlocking essays written in collaboration with Dr. Barnaby Norman (King's College London). We will be exploring a peculiar strand of postmodern narrative that owes a philosophical inheritance to Holderlin, Kafka,... more
"A collection of interlocking essays written in collaboration with Dr. Barnaby Norman (King's College London). We will be exploring a peculiar strand of postmodern narrative that owes a philosophical inheritance to Holderlin, Kafka, Hamsun, Walser and Benjamin. Our primary focus is a form of historically-embedded mourning that never finds purgation or release--in other words what W.G. Sebald refers to as a sense of vertigo, and what we now aim to define as postmodern melancholy.
In the wake of various historical traumas, the narrator-protagonists of these varied works find the only suitable response to be one of endless divagation. They trace peripatetic, psycho-geopraphic narratives that can only ever stand symbolically for an unnameable, unidentifiable, and unbounded sense of loss.
Key figures, each with a chapter devoted to them, include Chris Marker, W.G. Sebald, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Auster. Artists as various as Beckett, Blanchot, and Bergman will provide further background/context (alongside the work of Vladimir Nabokov, Andrei Tarkovsky, Thomas Bernhard, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Patrick Keiller).
Key concepts: trauma, melancholy, postmodernity, dérive, psycho-geography, liminality"
In the wake of various historical traumas, the narrator-protagonists of these varied works find the only suitable response to be one of endless divagation. They trace peripatetic, psycho-geopraphic narratives that can only ever stand symbolically for an unnameable, unidentifiable, and unbounded sense of loss.
Key figures, each with a chapter devoted to them, include Chris Marker, W.G. Sebald, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Auster. Artists as various as Beckett, Blanchot, and Bergman will provide further background/context (alongside the work of Vladimir Nabokov, Andrei Tarkovsky, Thomas Bernhard, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Patrick Keiller).
Key concepts: trauma, melancholy, postmodernity, dérive, psycho-geography, liminality"
Research Interests: Psychogeography, Trauma Studies, Samuel Beckett, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, and 14 moreMelancholy, Liminality, Postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, Paul Auster, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Friedrich Hölderlin, Vladimir Nabokov, W.G. Sebald (Area Studies), Knut Hamsun, Chris Marker, Werner Herzog, and Robert Walser
This essay attempts to identify an unusual brand of self-conscious narrative by focusing on Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement (2001). What makes this minority metafictional style especially unique is not only its presence in the work of one... more
This essay attempts to identify an unusual brand of self-conscious narrative by focusing on Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement (2001). What makes this minority metafictional style especially unique is not only its presence in the work of one of the late twentieth century's preeminent British novelists, but also its ethical character. For this reason, the kind of metafiction being discussed should not be conflated with more traditionally ideological forms that attest to their own fictionality in the name of undermining “realist” illusions. Rather, it will be argued that self-conscious narrative, in the case of McEwan, is oftentimes utilized in order to reassert an ethical complex that lies between author and reader, text and world. The fundamental differentiation being made, then, is that between a properly postmodernist metafiction and what might be considered a restorative metafiction that works, in a self-justifying manner, toward an affirmation of narrative ethics. For this latter style of metafiction, storytelling does not mark the beginning of a free-play of signifiers or a dispersal of constituting fictions, but rather the beginning of a dialogical and ethical relationship between texts and readers; of stories not just being told from one to another, but by one for another.
Ultimately, this essay examines the way the Ian McEwan of Atonement explores the same self–Other dynamics that underpin the work of Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Zygmunt Bauman while metafictionally making claims about narrative not unlike those found in the hermeneutic philosophies of Richard Kearney and Paul Ricoeur. For it is precisely this same ethical propensity of narrative as understood by Kearney and Ricoeur that Atonement not only dramatizes in its plot, but self-consciously illustrates at the level of its metafiction.
Ultimately, this essay examines the way the Ian McEwan of Atonement explores the same self–Other dynamics that underpin the work of Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Zygmunt Bauman while metafictionally making claims about narrative not unlike those found in the hermeneutic philosophies of Richard Kearney and Paul Ricoeur. For it is precisely this same ethical propensity of narrative as understood by Kearney and Ricoeur that Atonement not only dramatizes in its plot, but self-consciously illustrates at the level of its metafiction.
