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AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM

Year 2018, , 253 - 266, 28.06.2018
https://doi.org/10.26468/trakyasobed.437687

Abstract

Ian McEwan'ın Atonement adlı eserinin odağı, Briony'nin onu çevreleyen
gerçekliğe hakim olma çabası üzerinedir. Bununla birlikte, Briony'nin
gerçeği, kendini romanın kahramanı olarak yeniden yaratmasınin nedeni
açısından bir boşluk oluşmuştur. Bu makale, gerçekliği ortadan kaldırarak
Briony'nin doğrudan romantizm türünün zeminini terk ettiğini ve Bildungsroman
türüne girdiğini öne sürürek, yazın türünün geleneklerini yıkmasının sebebini
kendi anlatılarını kontrol etme arzusu olmasını tartışacaktır. Makale aynı
zamanda romanın genelinde görülen bu kontrol takıntısının sebebinin de ise
Briony’nin kendini kahraman olarak yaratma isteği olduğunu savunacaktır.

References

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail. (1986). “The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel)”. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin, University of Texas Press. 1986. Bernikow, Louise. Among Women. New York. 1981.
  • Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press. 1995.
  • Boes, Tobias. “Modernist Studies and the Bildungsroman: A Historical Survey of Critical Trends”. Literature Compass. Vol. 3, no. 2, 2006, pp. 230-243. JSTOR.
  • Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Harvard University Press. 1974.
  • Childs, Peter (ed.). The Fiction of Ian McEwan: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan. 2006.
  • Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. University of California Press. 1999. D'angelo, Kathleen. “‘To Make a Novel’: The Construction of a Critical Reardership in Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’” Studies in the Novel, vol. 41, no. 1, 2009, pp. 88–105. JSTOR.
  • Dilthey, Wilhelm. Poetry and Experience. Princeton University Press. 1985.
  • Doane, Janice L. and Devon L. Hodges. From Klein to Kristeva: Psychoanalytic Feminism and the Search for the “Good Enough” Mother. The University of Michigan Press. 1992.
  • Dobrogoszcz, Tomosz. “Narrative as Expiative Fantasy in Ian McEwan’s Atonement”. Roczniki Humanistyczne, vol. 63, no. 5, 2015, pp.115-127.
  • Donald, James and Ali Rattansi (eds.). Race, Culture and Difference. London: Sage. 1992.
  • Engel, Manfred. “Varians of the Romantic Bildungsroman in Romantic Prose Fiction”. Ed. By Gerald Gillespie, Manfred Engel and Bernard Dieterle. Romantic Prose Fiction. John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2008.
  • Finney, Brian. “Briony's Stand against Oblivion: The Making of Fiction in Ian McEwan's ‘Atonement.’” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 27, no. 3, 2004, pp. 68–82. JSTOR
  • Giles, Jeff. “Luminous Novel from Dark Master.” Newsweek 18 March 2002: 62-63.
  • Groes, Sebastian. Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Continuum. 2009.
  • Hirsch, Marianne. The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism. Indiana University Press. 1989.
  • O'Hara, David K. "Briony's Being-For: Metafictional Narrative Ethics in Ian McEwan's Atonement ." Critique 52 (2011): 74-10.
  • Irigaray, Luce. This Sex which is No One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca, Cornell University Press. 1985.
  • Kontje, Todd. The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre. Colombia. Camden House, 1993.
  • Luckas, George. The Theory of Novel. MIT Press. 1974.
  • Levin, Amy K. The Suppressed Sister: A Relationship in Novels by Nineteenth- and Twentieth Century British Women. London and Toronto: Associated University Presses. 1992.
  • Martin Jacob. “Who Killed Robbie and Cecilia? Reading and Misreading Ian McEwan's Atonement.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 52, no. 1, 2011, pp. 55-73.
  • Mathews, Peter. “The Impression of a Deeper Darkness: Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 32 no. 1, 2006, pp. 147-160. Project MUSE.
  • McEwan, Ian. Atonement. Anchor Books, 2001.
  • McNaron, Toni A. H. The Sister Bond: A Feminist View of a Timeless Connection. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1985.
  • Miller, J. Hillis. “Some Versions of Romance Trauma as Generated by Realist Detail in Ian Mc Ewan’s Atonement”. Ganteau, Jean-Michel and Sısana Onega (eds.). Trauma and Romance in Contemporary British Literature. Routledge, 2013.
  • Noakes, Jonathan, and Margaret Reynolds. Ian McEwan: The Child in Time, Enduring Love, Atonement. London: Vintage, 2002.
  • O’Dwyer, Erin. “Of Letters, Love, and Lack: A Lacanian Analysis of Ian McEwan’s Epistolary Novel Atonement”. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2016. 57:2, 178-190.
  • O’Hara, David K. “Briony's Being-For: Metafictional Narrative Ethics in Ian McEwan's Atonement. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2010. 52:1, pp. 74-100.
  • Winnicott, Donald. Playing and Reality. Routledge, 2005.

AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM

Year 2018, , 253 - 266, 28.06.2018
https://doi.org/10.26468/trakyasobed.437687

Abstract

The general focus on Atonement
has been on Briony’s attempt to dominate the reality that surrounds her.
However, there is a gap in respect of Briony’s motive for subverting reality in
such a way that she can recreate herself as the heroine of her writing,
consequently allowing her to “dispel her insignificance” (McEwan 2001; 72). The
argument put forth in this article will be based around the suggestion that by
subverting reality, Briony directly leaves the ground of the romance genre and
enters the Bildungsroman genre. Thus, although Ian McEwan claims this to be his
“Jane Austen” novel, no heroine of that genre would come to the conclusion that
Robbie is a sex maniac and thus follow that narrative trajectory to its tragic
conclusion. It is the very tedium of her own “romantic” big-house existence,
which indeed resembles that of a Jane Austen novel, that leads Briony to
subvert the romance genre and thus assert her independence from her
environment. For a reader in a small urban house, the Tallis/Jane Austen
existence seems romantic, but for Briony in her large romantic house, it
represents the tedium of daily life, which she thus subverts to create some measure
of differentiation from her mother and her home context. As well as subverting
conventions, Briony’s projection of the “sex maniac” theory onto the narrative
can be interpreted as her urge to be creative and imaginative. She thus plays
with the conventions of the genre to demonstrate her primary creativity that
will allow her to gain control of her own narrative.

References

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail. (1986). “The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel)”. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin, University of Texas Press. 1986. Bernikow, Louise. Among Women. New York. 1981.
  • Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press. 1995.
  • Boes, Tobias. “Modernist Studies and the Bildungsroman: A Historical Survey of Critical Trends”. Literature Compass. Vol. 3, no. 2, 2006, pp. 230-243. JSTOR.
  • Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Harvard University Press. 1974.
  • Childs, Peter (ed.). The Fiction of Ian McEwan: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan. 2006.
  • Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. University of California Press. 1999. D'angelo, Kathleen. “‘To Make a Novel’: The Construction of a Critical Reardership in Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’” Studies in the Novel, vol. 41, no. 1, 2009, pp. 88–105. JSTOR.
  • Dilthey, Wilhelm. Poetry and Experience. Princeton University Press. 1985.
  • Doane, Janice L. and Devon L. Hodges. From Klein to Kristeva: Psychoanalytic Feminism and the Search for the “Good Enough” Mother. The University of Michigan Press. 1992.
  • Dobrogoszcz, Tomosz. “Narrative as Expiative Fantasy in Ian McEwan’s Atonement”. Roczniki Humanistyczne, vol. 63, no. 5, 2015, pp.115-127.
  • Donald, James and Ali Rattansi (eds.). Race, Culture and Difference. London: Sage. 1992.
  • Engel, Manfred. “Varians of the Romantic Bildungsroman in Romantic Prose Fiction”. Ed. By Gerald Gillespie, Manfred Engel and Bernard Dieterle. Romantic Prose Fiction. John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2008.
  • Finney, Brian. “Briony's Stand against Oblivion: The Making of Fiction in Ian McEwan's ‘Atonement.’” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 27, no. 3, 2004, pp. 68–82. JSTOR
  • Giles, Jeff. “Luminous Novel from Dark Master.” Newsweek 18 March 2002: 62-63.
  • Groes, Sebastian. Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Continuum. 2009.
  • Hirsch, Marianne. The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism. Indiana University Press. 1989.
  • O'Hara, David K. "Briony's Being-For: Metafictional Narrative Ethics in Ian McEwan's Atonement ." Critique 52 (2011): 74-10.
  • Irigaray, Luce. This Sex which is No One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca, Cornell University Press. 1985.
  • Kontje, Todd. The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre. Colombia. Camden House, 1993.
  • Luckas, George. The Theory of Novel. MIT Press. 1974.
  • Levin, Amy K. The Suppressed Sister: A Relationship in Novels by Nineteenth- and Twentieth Century British Women. London and Toronto: Associated University Presses. 1992.
  • Martin Jacob. “Who Killed Robbie and Cecilia? Reading and Misreading Ian McEwan's Atonement.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 52, no. 1, 2011, pp. 55-73.
  • Mathews, Peter. “The Impression of a Deeper Darkness: Ian McEwan’s Atonement.” ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 32 no. 1, 2006, pp. 147-160. Project MUSE.
  • McEwan, Ian. Atonement. Anchor Books, 2001.
  • McNaron, Toni A. H. The Sister Bond: A Feminist View of a Timeless Connection. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1985.
  • Miller, J. Hillis. “Some Versions of Romance Trauma as Generated by Realist Detail in Ian Mc Ewan’s Atonement”. Ganteau, Jean-Michel and Sısana Onega (eds.). Trauma and Romance in Contemporary British Literature. Routledge, 2013.
  • Noakes, Jonathan, and Margaret Reynolds. Ian McEwan: The Child in Time, Enduring Love, Atonement. London: Vintage, 2002.
  • O’Dwyer, Erin. “Of Letters, Love, and Lack: A Lacanian Analysis of Ian McEwan’s Epistolary Novel Atonement”. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2016. 57:2, 178-190.
  • O’Hara, David K. “Briony's Being-For: Metafictional Narrative Ethics in Ian McEwan's Atonement. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2010. 52:1, pp. 74-100.
  • Winnicott, Donald. Playing and Reality. Routledge, 2005.
There are 29 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Journal Section Derleme Makalesi
Authors

Gamze Sabancı Uzun

Publication Date June 28, 2018
Published in Issue Year 2018

Cite

APA Sabancı Uzun, G. (2018). AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM. Trakya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 20(1), 253-266. https://doi.org/10.26468/trakyasobed.437687
AMA Sabancı Uzun G. AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM. Trakya University Journal of Social Science. June 2018;20(1):253-266. doi:10.26468/trakyasobed.437687
Chicago Sabancı Uzun, Gamze. “AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM”. Trakya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 20, no. 1 (June 2018): 253-66. https://doi.org/10.26468/trakyasobed.437687.
EndNote Sabancı Uzun G (June 1, 2018) AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM. Trakya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 20 1 253–266.
IEEE G. Sabancı Uzun, “AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM”, Trakya University Journal of Social Science, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 253–266, 2018, doi: 10.26468/trakyasobed.437687.
ISNAD Sabancı Uzun, Gamze. “AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM”. Trakya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 20/1 (June 2018), 253-266. https://doi.org/10.26468/trakyasobed.437687.
JAMA Sabancı Uzun G. AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM. Trakya University Journal of Social Science. 2018;20:253–266.
MLA Sabancı Uzun, Gamze. “AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM”. Trakya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, vol. 20, no. 1, 2018, pp. 253-66, doi:10.26468/trakyasobed.437687.
Vancouver Sabancı Uzun G. AN OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE ON IAN McEWAN’S ATONEMENT: BRIONY’S CREATIVE APPERCEPTION IN LIGHT OF ATTACHMENT THEORY GENRE, AND NARRATIVE FORM. Trakya University Journal of Social Science. 2018;20(1):253-66.
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