Imagination in Ian McEwan's Fiction

Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the author
• About the book
• Citability of the eBook
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 1.1 The imagination in McEwan’s fiction: a survey of existing scholarship
• 1.2 Concept and design
• 2 The literary imagination
• 2.1 Cognitive science, McEwan’s fiction and the imagination
• 2.1.1 The imagination – a ‘missing mystery’
• 2.1.2 Reality, fiction and the imagination
• 2.1.3 “Imagination,” “fantasy” and Einbildungskraft
• 2.1.4 The Daydreamer – writing as an act of the imagination
• 2.1.5 Inherent conflicts in McEwan’s aesthetics
• 2.1.6 Cognitive science, fiction and the imagination
• 2.1.7 Evolution and storytelling
• 2.2 Atonement: the novel as a ‘visual’ medium
• 2.2.1 The ‘fountain scene’ in Atonement
• 3 The traumatic imagination
• 3.1 Writing trauma
• 3.1.1 The Child in Time
• 3.1.2 Enduring Love
• 3.2 Imagining trauma
• 3.2.1 Black Dogs
• 3.2.2 Atonement
• 3.3 Contingency or trauma?
• 3.3.1 Saturday
• 3.3.2 On Chesil Beach
• 4 The paradoxical imagination
• 4.1 The imagination as a paradoxical social skill
• 4.1.1 The limits of evolutionary theory in Enduring Love
• 4.1.2 (Mis-)mind-readings in Enduring Love
• 4.1.3 The veil of silence in On Chesil Beach
• 4.2 Pathological forms of the imagination
• 4.2.1 Jed’s erotomania in Enduring Love
• 4.2.2 Baxter’s Huntington’s disease in Saturday
• 4.2.3 Lily’s dementia in Saturday
• 4.2.4 Briony’s dementia in Atonement
• 4.2.5 Marjory’s brain damage in On Chesil Beach
• 4.3 The ambiguity of self-deception and daydreaming
• 4.3.1 The Child in Time
• 4.3.2 Atonement
• 4.3.3 Black Dogs
• 4.3.4 On Chesil Beach
• 5 Reality, fiction and the imagination
• 5.1 Scope and limits of imaginative freedom
• 5.1.1 A Move Abroad
• 5.1.2 Imaginative freedom and scepticism
• 5.1.2.1 The Child in Time
• 5.1.2.2 Saturday and “The Day of Judgment”
• 5.1.3 Variations of the ‘child within’
• 5.1.3.1 The Daydreamer
• 5.1.3.2 The Cement Garden
• 5.1.3.3 The Child in Time
• 5.2 The imagination and power
• 5.2.1 “The Bully” and Saturday
• 5.2.2 “The Burglar” and Black Dogs
• 5.2.3 Deconstructing the country house ethos in Atonement
• 5.3 Fictional (non-)confessions
• 5.3.1 McEwan’s early fictional confessions
• 5.3.1.1 “Homemade”
• 5.3.1.2 “Butterflies”
• 5.3.2 McEwan’s later fictional confessions
• 5.3.2.1 Atonement
• 5.3.2.2 Enduring Love
• 6 Conclusion
• 6.1 The imagination – an indispensable ingredient in McEwan’s fiction?
• 6.2 Outlook: the imagination in McEwan’s latest novels
• 6.2.1 Solar (2010)
• 6.2.2 Sweet Tooth (2012)
• 6.2.3 The Children Act (2014)
• Works cited