Atoning for Nostalgia in Ian McEwan’s Atonement
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20248982 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Catherine Delesalle-Nancey (Université Jean Moulin Lyon III, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 105 |
| Publication date | 2018-10-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/h7040105 |
| OpenAlex | W2898823400 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
Many critics have pointed out the ambiguities of Atonement, a postmodernist anti-nostalgic novel that brings to the fore all the traditional topoi of Englishness in order better to denounce them as sham. In Atonement, the nostalgic longing is linked to the desire of Briony (the protagonist/narrator) for a return to a state of innocence which, I will argue through a close analysis of the text and its recurring images, is as much an atoning for her crime as a longing to be at-one in a state of harmony. Literally utopian, this nostalgic longing appears as a fantasy of omnipotence by an immature ego. Yet Briony’s being born into a writer entails a facing of the other within the self, an atoning for her nostalgic bias, not by erasing it, but by acknowledging her full responsibility in it, a process the reader is also invited to go through. From a regressive quest, nostalgia thus turns into an opening to otherness and to new potentialities. The unbridgeable gap between nostalgic desire and its fulfilment is what fuels our longing, keeps us alive and allows for creation
Aesthetics · Art · Atonement · Fantasy · Innocence · Literature · Omnipotence · Psychoanalysis · Theology · Visual arts · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |