Narrative space in Ian McEwan’s Saturday: A narratological perspective

Abstract

Abstract Although the work of Ian McEwan, one of the most important modern British writers, has been quite thoroughly researched, the narrative space was rarely the subject of narratological treatment. This article tackles a close reading of McEwan’s novel Saturday from a narratological perspective testing the applicability of a series of spatial categories systematized by Marie-Laure Ryan in the already existing narratological tradition and in her own research in narrative space. At the macro level of the story, the circular structure of the novel and the concepts of space as a container and space as a network are being shown and so is the use of local names. In the foreground there is a discussion of the five fundamental levels of narrative space (spatial frames, setting, story space and spaces of intertextuality, storyworld, narrative universe), followed by the treatment of textualization at the micro level (perspectivism and aperspectivism, map, and tour, and the lived experience of space). The analysis of space representation in Saturday eventually makes it possible to conclude that McEwan promotes the conception of space that became prominent within the spatial turn in postmodern humanities.