A Study Of The Postmodern Narrative Strategies In Atonement By Ian Mcewan

Ian McEwan is one of the most prestigious and influential writers in the UK.He has the quick-thinking and the sharp insight to describe the inner uneasiness and fear of modern people.In his writing career,McEwan has created many world-renowned novels which reflect his deep concerns about society,humanity and war.His outstanding novel Atonement,as one of them,became very popular immediately after its publication and was nominated for the 2002 Booker Award.In Atonement,McEwan portrayed many fresh and vivid characters and told a romantic but real story with his flexible and skillful postmodern narrative strategies.In the context of World War II,the sorrow and joy of these characters were described in detail.As for the narration of Atonement,it shows the typical characteristics of postmodernism.Therefore,this thesis focuses on the postmodern narrative strategies and the systematic and comprehensive analysis of Atonement based on the postmodern narratology.Under the background of the postmodernism,economy,science and technology develop rapidly,on the contrary,reason collapses and subject alienates.Now that the traditional values can't guide people anymore,they give up their insistence of chasing after the ultimate meaning.Therefore,this series of profound changes would undoubtedly be reflected in the narrative works.In the perspective of narrative content,postmodernism narratology pays attention to people's inner absurdity,fear and uncertainty.In the perspective of narrative techniques,limited third person narration,nested structure,collage,parody,non-traditional endings and denarration are used commonly.In the perspective of narrative topics,most of postmodern works show the deconstruction of traditional values.All in all,the analysis of Atonement from the perspective of postmodernism narratology will not only clarify all kinds of the postmodern narrative strategies adopted in the novel,but also will provide readers with a more specific state and changing process of people under such a background.The main body of the thesis is divided into five parts.The first part is the introduction,focusing on Ian McEwan' personal experiences and his work Atonement.Then,the postmodern narrative strategies are introduced.It also involves a brief introduction of narrative discourse,narrative focalization and narrative structure.The second part is the analysis of the deconstructive narrative discourses,which emphasizes the feature of unreliability and deconstruction of character and author's discourse.The third part is the analysis from narrative focalization.The multiple third person internal focalizations and the changing of focalizations are the core concerns.The fourth part is the analysis of multi-level narrative structures in the novel which contains the staged and collage narrative structures and the fifth part is the conclusion showing the research results of this thesis.At present,the analysis of Atonement in academia mostly starts from a single postmodern narrative strategy but lacks a comprehensive and detailed summary.Therefore,through the analysis,the thesis not only makes up for this shortcoming,but also helps readers to have a comprehensive understanding of postmodernism narratology and its characteristics.