Literary Phenomenology and the Historicity of the Lifeworld: Personal and Public Crisis in Edmund Husserl and Ian McEwan

Abstract: This essay argues for the relevance of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological method as applied to Ian McEwan’s presentation of private crisis and public history in his novel Lessons . Both Husserl and McEwan advocate for the judicious use of reason and rational inquiry in the direction of politics and culture. I demonstrate how McEwan’s literary representation of consciousness in the context of a life lived amid historical change draws near to a practice of phenomenology, while also probing some difficulties in achieving the neutrality of the transcendental standpoint because of McEwan’s complex evocation of memory, repressed desire, and the uncertain image of the past.