What is a novel ? A fiction ? Literature?

Résumé du document

For several centuries, the predominant idea, except little exclusions like works by Diderot or Cervantes, was that the main function of novels was simply to tell a story. Reflections about writing itself were essentially reserved to poetry. Novels extol primacy to imagination and their pre-established forms and devices did not call some reflection.

Extraits

[...] What is a novel ? A fiction ? Literature? During several centuries, the predominant idea, except little exclusion like novels by Diderot or Cervantes, was that the main function of those was simply to tell a story. Reflections about writing itself were essentially reserved to poetry. Novels extol primacy to imagination and their pre-established forms and devices didn't call some reflection. Today, this postulate is still important in a big part of literature ; however, a new conception also appeared. [...]

[...] I think this novel has finally a rather pessimistic conclusion. Literature can't be a total form of redemption. Powers of imagination are strong but not more than reality. So, Atonement is not only a book about atonement and redemption, but also a book about literature and its powers. Because, if in the novel Briony seems to be the author of the story, there is a second level in the metafiction. Because beside Briony, there is the real author : Ian McEwan. [...]

[...] it's was only fictional. And we forgot that all is fictional. From the beginning to the end, we are in fiction. McEwan deals for the frontier between reality and fiction. In Atonement, this limit is blind. Reader can be really attentive to understand when he is in fiction and when he is in reality (in a Briony point of view of course, because technically, he's always in fiction, that's the point.). This blind border is the main element of the novel because it's because of it that Briony accuses Robbie for the rape. [...]

[...] One of the points of view belongs to the twelve-years-old Briony, it's a really present and immediate one. The other one belongs to the old Briony, the author of the book. There, we have a look by a woman who has distance with the events, who can understand them better. We know this Briony in the fourth part, called “London, 1999”. We learn the real purpose of the novel, it's real aim : expiation. The third part we have just read never happened. [...]

[...] Reflection about the power of literature ? We'll begin to ask why Atonement can be considered as a metafiction. Then, we'll analyse the link between metafiction and Briony's atonement. Finally, we'll wonder what Atonement answers about the power of fiction, of literature, of art. When we read Atonement for the first time, we can't, without a very good attention, find the truth. Until the fourth part, we can believe that we are in a normal novel. Atonement seems to be only a love story between Cecilia Tallis and Robbie Turner, story which is disturbed by the presence of the Machiavellian Briony, Cecilia's little sister, who accuses Robbie for a rape he didn't commit. [...]