Bringing the Past to Heel: History, Identity and Violence in Ian McEwan's Black Dogs

2007

Ian McEwan's 1992 novel Black Dogs employs postmodern understandings of history while also critiquing these same perspectives. In particular, by depicting the efforts of its protagonist, Jeremy, to write a memoir of his parents-in-law, it draws attention to the subjectivity of historical writing. While this quality has led some critics to condemn the novel for its escapism and amorality, the authors of the essay argue that Black Dogs is a statement about the necessity of history rather than its futility. Indeed, they read the text as a dramatization of humanity-s ability to bear rather than escape the often troubling burden of the past and an endorsement of the writing of history despite th…

E. Doyle McCarthy. 2017. Emotional Lives: Dramas of Identity in an Age of Mass Media

2019

This article reviews Emotional Lives: Dramas of Identity in an Age of Mass Media 978-0-521-82014-1

Toolan, Michael. 2016. Making Sense of Narrative Text: Situation, Repetition, and Picturing in the Reading of Short Stories

2017

DISCONCERTING MIRRORS: ANGELA CARTER'S LIZZIE BORDEN STORIES

2004

Murderesses are a source of moral outrage; their representation—especially of those involved in the death of children 1 —is typically characterised by a disgusted fascination that makes no claim to...

Instead of an Editorial: Mission Statements by Representatives of Both Fields

2012

The following mission statements by linguists and literary scholars working in different institutional and cultural contexts and at different stages of their careers are intended to map out the terrain covered by this journal. They tell similar stories about how these scholars came to cross the disciplinary boundary that too often divides their two fields, and they reveal a number of shared interests and emphases. But they also highlight the diversity of methodologies to which this journal is open – from metrics and stylistics to the cognitive sciences and Systemic Functional Grammar. The hopes and expectations voiced by the authors are partly pragmatic, expressing the wish that the journal…