The Waiting Game: Medieval Allusions and the Lethal Nature of Passivity in Ian McEwan's Atonement

Abstract

In his seminal essay Tradition and Individual Talent, T.S. Eliot claims that writer's best work often occurs in places where the dead poets, his [the writer's] ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously (467). Novelist Ian McEwan certainly seems to subscribe to this view, for he imbues his works with references to literary endeavors of his predecessors. McEwan's novel Saturday, for example, hinges on recitation of Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach (see Hillard), and in Atonement, McEwan creates literary landscape haunted by specters of famed characters from earlier fictional realms. Indeed, intertextual quality of McEwan's novel about young girl and lifelong consequences of her terrible fabrication has fascinated critics of Atonement, particularly those who focus on novel's first section. Brian Finney, for example, regards Atonement as a rereading of classic realist novel of nineteenth century, just as it is displacement of modernist novel, particularly as instanced in fiction of Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence (73). Similarly, both Earl G. Ingersoll (249) and Maria Margaronis (142) note author's indebtedness in opening section of his novel to country-house tradition, while Pilar Hidalgo stresses Part One's connection to works ranging from Austen's Northanger Abbey and James's What Maisie Knew to Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (84). McEwan does not limit himself just to mining works of his nineteenth- and twentieth-century predecessors for literary inspiration, however, for he also plumbs literary productions of an era much more remote: Middle Ages. The novelist peppers Atonement with references to storied medieval characters found in Chaucer's oeuvre and in Arthurian Romance, such as Troilus and Criseyde, Griselda, and Tristan and Isolde (McEwan 192). Additionally, McEwan subtly evokes King Arthur by having Briony, youngest member of self-involved Tallis family, mimic legendary Briton in her desire to wait for pre-dinner miracle (72). However, unlike his allusions to more modern texts, McEwan's medieval references have received little critical attention. Those who analyze McEwan's intertextual habits seem interested primarily in determining Atonement's relationship with other novels. For critics consumed with work's status as novel, medieval narratives simply belong to wrong genre (McEwan 42) and, therefore, do not warrant too much attention. Although Finney, for instance, does mention briefly hero Robbie's transformation into Petrarchan lover following his fraught encounter at fountain with his benefactor's daughter, Cecilia (Finney 78), critic concentrates predominately on ways in which Atonement offers trenchant critique of realist novel, particularly its method of cloaking its status as fiction (73). Alistair Cormack takes issue with Finney, but Cormack too focuses on Atonement's position to other novels, claiming that, far from criticizing realism as Finney contends, McEwan's novel represents return to heart of 'Great Tradition' of English novelists (79). Richard Pedot concentrates on Atonement's conversation with modernism (155) as opposed to realism, but he looks solely at modernist novels in his analysis, neglecting potential influence of modernist poets like T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, poets to whom McEwan alludes in his story's pivotal chapter (McEwan 77). (1) Thus, like medieval writers, modernist poets, who, significantly, often hearken back to medieval, find themselves--and their literary productions--relegated to sidelines in analyses of McEwan's text. Bringing works from other genres and, hence, other eras off bench, however, enables critics to develop new ways in which to tackle McEwan's dense tale. As Finney notes, once text establishes its interdependence on other texts, its signification proliferates (73). …

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