Enduring Love
by Ian McEwan
meta-narratives
What i mean by meta-narrative.
 World views/explanations
 Dominant ideologies and beliefs that shape the way we construct
knowledge and explain or justify what is ‘real’. Or
 How we know what we know.
 Importantly, these three examples reflect Western epistemologies.
(or ‘worldview’) It is after all a novel by a British writer.
 The reason I’m going with meta-narrative is that it sits so nicely
with the theme of narrative and storytelling, and the shortcoming
that words have when looking to explain feelings and experiences.
Note that it is the least educated character, Jed, who has the least
difficulty defining the situation he finds himself in.
1. The pre-modern, religious narrative
 Pre-eighteenth century - religion was the dominant
narrative
 Most phenomenon explained as the work of God
 This pre-modern approach is represented by Jed Parry
 Stories until nineteenth century often took the approach
of fable, told by omniscient, god-like narrators
distributing justice as required v twentieth century, or
post-modern writing with its numerous viewpoints,
uncertainty and ambiguity.
2.
The rational/scientific narrative or
Rationalism
 Eighteenth century enlightenment heralds the
start of a new meta-narrative
 Reason advocated as the primary basis of
authority
 Authority removed from aristocracy and
churches
 Empirical evidence a founding block of
Science.
 (observation and experiment not theory)
 Joe Rose represents this meta-narrative
3. Romanticism
 Clarissa
 English Lecturer whose research interest
is the private life of Romantic poet, John
Keats. Also look out for John Milton’s
Paradise Lost references when exploring
‘the fall’.
 Romanticism = artistic, literary &
intellectual movement
Romanticism
 a new kind of poetry that emphasised intuition over reason and in
many ways was a rejection of many of the ideas of the
Enlightenment
 Stresses the pastoral over the urban, celebrating the sublimity of
nature.
 often rejected classical forms and elevated language in an effort to
use the vernacular or ‘real’ language.
 Often elevated folk heroes
 Explored the direct relationship between man and nature
Romanticism in a nutshell
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.‘
Last 2 lines of Keats’s Ode on a Grecian urn