Studies in Literature and Language
The Cement Garden as an Allegory of Modernity
Abstract
This thesis concentrates on the analysis of Ian McEwan’s controversical work The Cement Garden. By referring to Walter Benjamin’s theory of allegory, especially his illustrations of fragmentation and melancholy, this thesis will analyze the fragmentary images of ruins, death and corpse and the fragmentary time presented in it; meanwhile, it will explore the alienated human relationship, the identity crises and the barren spiritual state of modern people under the melancholic gaze. Through the analysis, the author elucidates that that The Cement Garden is not a “revolting novel ” as some critics claimed, but can be called an allegory of modernity in the modern cultural context.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Benjamin, W. (1985). The origin of German tragic drama, In J. Osborne (Trans.). London: Verso.
Benjamin, W. (1999). The arcade project, In E. Howard, & M. Kelvin (Trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bloomfield, M. (1972, Winter). Allegory as interpretation. New Literary History, 3(2), 301-318.
Bradbury, M. (2004). The modern British novel 1878-2001. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Dunn, R. (1998). Identity crises: A social critique of postmodernity. London: University of Minnesota Press.
Haffenden, J. (1985). Novelists in interview. New York: Methuen & Co. Ltd.
Lewis, P. (1991). Contemporary novelists, In H. Lesley (Ed.). Chicago and London: St. James Press.
McEwan, I. (1978). In between the sheets. London: Jonathan Cape.
McEwan, I. (1989). A move abroad. London: Pocador.
McEwan, I. (1996). The cement garden. London: Jonathan Cape.
Moran, J. (2003, July). "Criticism: Benjamin and Boredom." Critical Quarterly, 45(1), 168-181.
Roger, A. (1996) “Ian McEwan’s Portrayal of Women.” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 32(1),11-26.
Slay, J. (1996). Ian McEwan. Boston: Twayne Publishers Inc..
Spacks, P. (1995). Boredom: The literary history of a state of mind. Chicago University of Chicago Press.
Strommen, M. (1968). "Alienation, gratification and disenchantment." Regelious Education 64 (5), 362-368.
Wolin, R. (1982). Walter Benjamin: An aesthetic of redemption. New York: Columbia University Press.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/10826
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2019 Su CHAI
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Share us to: 
Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard
Reminder
How to do online submission to another Journal?
If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:
1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author
Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.
2. Submission
Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).
STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office
Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture 
