An Intertextual Study Of Ian McEwan's Novels

Ian McEwan is one of the most influential writers in contemporary British literature. He has been recognized as the "national writer" of the country, whose name has become synonymous with "miracle" in the English literary. In recent years, the domestic research on McEwan is also increasing year by year. Most of his novels are characterized by meta fiction, postmodern narrative techniques,narrative cognition and narrative ethics, which are generally confined to the framework of artistic techniques. Undoubtedly, these interpretations provide us with a certain angle of view to examine his works. But if we stay in the novel's exquisite art form and neglect its rich ideological content, we cannot avoid formalism error. This thesis focuses on the source text and the imitation embodied in the interactive dialogue in the process of creation from the perspective of postmodern intertextuality theory, and then highlights the text in which the writer expresses the liberal humanism and heavy social responsibility.Text analysis is another important criticism strategy after new criticism, Russian formalism and structuralism.The intertextuality theory of text analysis has overcome the self-contained and closed text view of structuralism. It has become an important means of interpretation of novel criticism, along with Bakhtin's dialogism. The abundant intertextual expressions in McEwan's novels provide the possibility of intertextuality.This thesis is composed of three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion. The main body is as follows:The introduction connects with the author, the works, and the research status of his works at home and abroad, and the research methods, angles,writing ideas, and briefly expounds the theoretical and practical significance of this study.The first chapter is a theoretical review, which introduces the proposition,establishment, development and some related concepts and terms of intertextuality. At the same time, it summarizes the specific application of the theory in McEwan's novel. The theory of intertextuality from the perspective of postmodernism is the theoretical basis of this thesis. The concept of intertextuality is the basic meaning of two aspects: the first is the relationship between a certain text and it refers to, rewriting, absorption, expansion, or generally transforms other texts; the second is that any text itself is an intertextual, in a text, it can identify the existence of other forms of text; for example, the first cultural text and the culture of the surrounding text, any text is to re-organize the past citation. The concept of intertextuality emphasizes the writing in a coordinate system to be taken care of. From the horizontal perspective, it will make a contrastive study of text and other texts, let the text determine its characteristics in a system of text; from the vertical perspective, it pays attention to the influence of the former text, to obtain recognition system on the literary and cultural traditions. It should be said that the use of intertextuality to describe issues related to the text, not only shows the writing activities within the pluralistic culture and discourse intertwined facts, but also shows profound writing and its rich connotation and complex social and cultural connotation of history.The second chapter mainly deals with intertextuality in the text. The first section is intertextuality within the text, that is, the mutual reference within the author's novel text, and explores the relationship between a few recognizable and independent texts. In this part, McEwan's novel Atonement is taken as an example to explore the mutual elucidation of the four texts in Atonement, and the evolution of the new text based on the old text, and the development of the text into the structure of the novel. The second section discusses how the author's style of writing has been influenced by Kafka and Woolf, and how their texts, backgrounds, characters and themes interact with each other to form intertextuality.The third chapter is the analysis of intertextuality in culture, Firstly McEwan's novels are influenced by the social background at the time when setting the background, the author uses background of Jan Austin's novels, Secondly, the relation between intertextuality and readers. A close relationship established between intertextuality and readers, it will inspire readers to imagine and get more knowledge, but at the same time it is also secretive, which reflects everyone's culture, personality, memory. In his study of the reader's role,McEwan shows the moral responsibility of the readers of the modern novel, the ultimate authority of the reader in interpretation, understanding, judgment and atonement.The fourth chapter analyzes the concrete manifestation of intertextuality in McEwan's novels, by reference, hint, skill parody. Specific performance, the reader will find the correlation between the text, found the rich meaning, help readers to better understand the theme and character.The conclusion of this thesis points out that intertextuality, as one of the approaches to explore the meaning of texts, provides another possibility for us to interpret McEwan's novels from different perspectives. Intertextuality makes McEwan's plot, characters and scenes, like a piece of music echoing in many voices, showing a changing and unified moving melody. More importantly,intertextuality reflects its importance as a narrative technique, and demonstrates its important role in explaining the theme, plot, characters and the rich connotation of the text.