Desperado Literature: A Rewriting of Fear as Terror, as Illustrated by Ian Mc Ewan’s Saturday (2005)
There are two traditions, we might argue, in the history of literature: the fairy-tale tradition (as I call it) and its opposite. The fairy-tale tradition sees the world as making sense, as leading to the happy fulfillment of expectations. Boy meets girl, boy courts girl, wins girl, marries girl – i...
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| Format: | article |
| Language: | EN |
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University of Edinburgh
2006
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| Online Access: | https://doaj.org/article/7b9617c0c7184613aed84cf6625ec6c8 |
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| Summary: | There are two traditions, we might argue, in the history of literature: the fairy-tale tradition (as I call it) and its opposite. The fairy-tale tradition sees the world as making sense, as leading to the happy fulfillment of expectations. Boy meets girl, boy courts girl, wins girl, marries girl – in simple or complicated arrangements. The fairy-tale tradition hinges on a linear storyline which inevitably leads to a definite denouement. The modernist movement is the first attempt at opposing the fairy tale tradition, at proving that life is not a system (‘a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged’ – Virginia Woolf,The Common Reader), but chaos (‘a luminous halo surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end’ – Woolf again). |
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