Browsing by Subject "Ian McEwan"

This thesis explores the textual relations of Ian McEwan’s 2014 novel The Children Act from the law and literature perspective. Using Gérard Genette’s theory of hypertextuality as my theoretical framework, I argue that Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1596–1597) is a central hypotext of The Children Act. In chapter 2, I survey the law and literature interdiscipline, and explain how my thesis hopes to contribute to its methodology. From its beginnings in the 1970s, the law and literature movement has developed outside its original scope and is increasingly focusing on non-textual aspects of law and literature, as well as other cultural phenomena. Despite the proliferation of different approaches and methods, the interdiscipline has suffered from an underuse and underdevelopment of literary theory as relates to the legal study of literary texts. I propose that theories of textual relations are important to the legal aspect of literature, and that literary texts be selected for legal study not merely for their legal themes, but also for how they relate to and converse with earlier works. I propose the terms “legal literary texts” and “legal novel” as appellations of the texts that law in literature examines. In chapter 3, I give an account of Genette’s theory of hypertextuality, including Genettean formal and thematic transposition. Formal transposition manifests itself in The Children Act through narrativization, transforming dramatic verse to narrative prose. The thematic transposition of the novel is all of diegetic, pragmatic and semantic, the latter constituting both transmotivation and transvaluation. Lastly, I compare and contrast hypertextuality to a sibling concept, adaptation, citing Linda Hutcheon’s theory, and explain my choice of the former. Chapter 4 is devoted to quotation and allusion in The Children Act. I review quotation as a theoretical concept and analyse central quotations in the novel, including its epigraph and its quotation of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. I compare and contrast theories of allusion. I identify and analyse important Shakespearean allusions in the novel, making the case that Shakespeare is a strong textual presence in The Children Act. I propose that the formation of a hypertextual relationship is dependent on quotation and allusion. In chapter 5 I examine The Children Act as a hypertext of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. I survey the academic field of Shakespeare and law and presenting the important role of the Inns of Court in Renaissance London’s literary and cultural life. Merchant is present in The Children Act through diegetic transposition of central characters, but this transposition is adapted to arrangement rather than character identity. Judgeship is likened to authorship in the novel. Transposing the religious conflict of the play, law and religion are shown to be essentially the same kinds of belief systems and communities. A central transposition is the judgment on blood, where a religious outsider (Shylock/Adam Henry) is essentially forcibly converted. At trial, the judge (Portia/Fiona) is directed to her decision by a sole desirable outcome that precedes argumentation. Music is a common theme for both text, but in The Children Act, music is both metonymy for all other art and a metaphor for law. In Merhcant, the weather poses a threat to business, whereas in The Children Act it is an alternative, intrusive soundscape to music. Adam Henry’s letters and poems are a transposition of the many letters as well as the caskets in Merchant. As in Merchant, life and law is revealed to be a theatrical stage. Both texts end in marital reconciliation. McEwan’s novel is a treatise of the common textuality of law and literature. Despite different institutions, ways of telling, and modes of production, the textuality of law and literature is basically the same. A legal novel’s textual relationships link it to previous legal literary texts, forming a network of texts that comment on law.