CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Article Title

A Consilient Science and Humanities in McEwan's Enduring Love

Authors

Curtis D. Carbonell, New Jersey City University

Abstract

In his article "A Consilient Science and the Humanities in McEwan's Enduring Love" Curtis D. Carbonell provides a reading of a Third Culture novel that foregrounds the relationship of the sciences and the humanities. In Ian McEwan's novel we see a perfect example of how literary thinkers are listening to the world of science and speaking to it in return. This article responds to Stephen Greenberg's ideas about how Neo-Darwinian themes in the novel point to social themes by arguing that what underlies both of these is a deeper structure: the tension between C.P. Snow's Two Cultures, which is only one cycle in a longer engagement/conflict between science and the humanities. In particular, Carbonell reads McEwan's primary character, science-minded thinker Joe Rose, as juxtaposed by two foils that represent the humanities: a Keats's scholar, his wife Clarissa, and a religious fanatic and erotomaniac, Jed Parry. Carbonell analyzes the novel demonstrating that Joe's rationality is not quite so rational. McEwan represents Joe as a complex character to complicate a falsely simplistic dichotomy of the sciences and the humanities. The novel is best read, therefore, as an example of how a Third Culture might be envisioned as a true melding of the two categories.

Recommended Citation

Carbonell, Curtis D "A Consilient Science and Humanities in McEwan's Enduring Love." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 12.3 (2010): <http://dx.doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1425>

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