Lesson 5 & 6
- 1. • What do you think is important about McEwan’s use of other texts (i.e. Scientific, literary and religious) in Enduring Love as a whole? How would we answer this question? What is the question asking? Consideration of different interpretations – reasons for the use of other ideas/texts. Relevant contextual factors – modern novel, written with hindsight and by an academic
- 2. Love in its several forms • Romantic • Familial • Idealised Examples? • Obsessive • Jealous • Forms that destroy love and love as destructive.
- 3. 3 central protagonists – all with a a different understanding of human reality • Jed = God underpins reality. Faith • Clarissa = art, beauty & happiness not facts Emotion are at the centre of people’s relationships and that these are important in underpinning life & love. • Joe = rationalist, who thinks Science reveals Cognition facts about existence and the universe.
- 4. 3 periods of Western cultural history The Renaissance (16th The Enlightenment The idea of and belief Century) Influence of (18th Century) – in God – uncontested Art and Classical Expansion of in Europe until the Civilisations – Human rationalism and Renaissance interests become Science more important Although, the 19th century Romantic period reasserted the importance of nature, emotion and the imagination
- 5. The 3 protagonists have correlatives in the book • Jed: his religious viewpoint is clearly presented in the book’s religious allusions, especially in the opening scenes where it parodies Eden and the Fall, from the first book of the Bible. • Parallels between the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus and that of John Logan.
- 6. Genesis – Eden and the Fall • In the beginning… • The images of a man and a woman, under a tree, eating together. • The serpent shatters this world. There are elements of chapter one that are alike to this text.
- 7. Evolutionary Science • 19th Century narrative turn in Science is discussed by Joe – his correlative. • Allows the reader to see parallels between Science and story telling. • Joe draws links between fact and emotion and what is reality.
- 8. Romantic Love – a contested phenomenon – Clarissa’s correlative • Joe makes the connection between Jed’s love and other kinds, but he is not able to admit a resemblance beyond that between the diseased and the healthy – between the recklessly sane and the recklessly insane. • Yet he does see Jed’s love for him as a distorted reflection of his own love for Clarissa.
- 9. The modern understanding of love in the West has been informed by Romanticism. • Poets such as Keats and other Romantics (Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth) have influenced our notions of Romantic love (RL). • RL is so important that it has become a key measure of individual happiness and a pervasive ingredient of popular culture.
- 10. The metaphorical register has shifted: (sexual) dependency “Love is the “My love is like a drug” red, red rose” “Addicted to love” Joe muses on drink, drugs and mind- altering substances and there is also a suggestion that he is intolerant towards those whose lose control of themselves
- 11. • Joe is hostile to the narratives of literature in which Clarissa believes • He berates the science collection at the library and questions those who believe that “literature was the greatest intellectual achievement of our civilisation?” (chapter 4, 42)
- 12. • One of the purposes of the open-to-doubt account of what occurred at Keat’s meeting with Wordsworth in December 1817 (chapter 19, 167-8) is to remind the reader that stories are often perpetuated because they are memorable and appealing rather than because they are true.
- 13. • How much of Joe’s story is true? • We only have his account – both Clarissa and the police doubt the validity of Joe’s claims. • Can something be factually untrue, yet emotionally truthful?
- 14. • What do you think is important about McEwan’s use of other texts (i.e. Scientific, literary and religious) in Enduring Love as a whole? Scientific texts Religious texts Literary texts Important? Important? Important? Draws parallels between Chapter 1 – the Fall, the The ideas of Romantic love human existence – rooted in Garden of Eden imagery. have been set by writers – psychology and physiology what is Romantic love?
- 15. • What do you think is important about McEwan’s use of other texts (i.e. Scientific, literary and religious) in Enduring Love as a whole? Possible content: Comments might be made about: • the ways all texts are rooted in human experience • the ways the texts reveal characters and academics • the ways storytelling itself is explored • the way the novel explores scientific, literary and religious issues • the way there is haziness between fact and fiction (meta-narrative might be discussed) • the way McEwan teases the reader (the fake Psychological text in Appendix 1) • McEwan’s being too self-conscious, showing too much cleverness at the reader’s expense, etc.