Intertextual and self-referential elements as narrative strategies in Ian McEwan's fiction

Contemporary English novelist, Ian McEwan's fiction is marked with intertextuality and self-referentiality. This study aims to analyze McEwan's narrative fiction regarding intertextual and self-referential elements, elucidating how they help with the narrative discourse produced by the author. Using the terminologies primarily offered by Gerard Genette, the study draws on allusion, pastiche, and epigraph and explores their relationship with narrative strategies. These elements are, to a great extent, associated with postmodern literature and metafiction. Genette expands the term intertextuality with paratextuality and hypertextuality. It is seen that the author refers to the fictional works under consideration and the previously written other texts, especially in the context of intertextuality. McEwan, as an implied author, stresses reality in three ways. First, he emphasizes reality with the human condition. Second, he stresses discrepancy using parodical and ironical aspects by transforming hypotexts. Third, he questions reality through textuality. The study concludes that McEwan's Atonement and Sweet Tooth incorporate the concepts and elements of intertextuality and self-referentiality, using them as a set of narrative strategies. McEwan is concerned with the interaction between history and fiction and reality and imagination.