The Invented And The Actual

Ian McEwan(1948-)is one of the most significant writers with great influence in Britain,and he is among the top list with Martin Amis and Julian Barnes in Britain literary circle.As a brilliant and prominent contemporary writer,he is renowned for his works in diverse themes and writing style.Due to his writing style,McEwan once gained the reputation of “Ian Macabre” and his works have won many awards,especially the Booker Prize for his work Atonement,which make him the literary celebrity and one of the representatives of postmodern novelist.As his latest novel,Sweet Tooth is remarkable for its writing skill and the contemporary literary scenes as well as historical events.This thesis applies theories and related concepts of historiographic metafiction of Linda Hutcheon to analyze McEwan’s novel Sweet Tooth,which combines historical events and scenes with narrative techniques such as the first point of view,embedded narration,intertextuality and metaficiton.Under the guidance of the theory of historiographic metaficiton,the postmodern historiography and metafictional narrative techniques in this novel are explored,therefore revealing the blurring relation between history and fiction,as well as the relation between the invented and the actual.Meanwhile,it also probes the significance of the novel Sweet Tooth from the perspective of historiographic metafiction.This thesis includes five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction part,introducing information about Ian McEwan and his novel Sweet Tooth.On the other hand,domestic and abroad studies on Ian McEwan and the novel Sweet Tooth from different perspectives are involved in this chapter.At the same time,the theory of historiographic metafiction and its background are introduced in this chapter.Chapter two focuses on analyzing the background and historical hints related to the story,as well as the writing style of forms and elements related to Sweet Tooth.Through such analysis,it reveals that Sweet Tooth is installed by the petit histories,which challenges the official version of history.Chapter three focuses on that Sweet Tooth questions the credibility of historiography by applying narrative techniques such as embedded narration,intertextuality and autobiographical reflection,thus revealing that the history in Sweet Tooth is subjective and traditional historiography is under the control of the power.Chapter four discusses the relation between history and fiction reflected in this novel Sweet Tooth,thus revealing McEwan’s consciousness and attitude towards the relation between history and fiction,as well as the invented and the actual as the stand of a postmodern writer.On the other hand,through retracing the history in the period of Cold War of Britain,McEwan attempts to rethink the way to get to the past and shows the struggle of the intellectual especially writers to defend their free right of expressing.Chapter five is the conclusion.It summarizes the characteristics of historiographic metafiction through revealing the petit histories and different writing styles in this novel,as well as analyzing the metaficitonal narrative techniques.In this way,it reveals that McEwan’s attempts to show the impossibility to retrace the original history and his question on the history.In addition,it exposes McEwan’s consideration on the blurring line between history and fiction,and his reflection writing.