Abstract This essay uses Alan Palmer's cognitive analysis of Enduring Love as a way to compare and contrast cognitive and rhetorical narratology. Focusing on our different interpretations and evaluations of McEwan's handling of Clarissa Mellon—Palmer finds it deeply flawed, while I find it successful—the essay addresses two main questions: (1) What is it about the two approaches that lead Palmer and me to disagree as we do? (2) What are the particular elements in McEwan's design of the novel that contribute to this disagreement? In answering the first question, the essay contrasts Palmer's concern with the novel's representation of the intermental unit formed by Joe and Clarissa with the rhetorical approach's concern with the novel's progression. Palmer's focus generates substantial insights into the novel, but it neglects an important dimension of the context within which McEwan places Clarissa's responses: the progression's thematic concern with the vexed relationship between love and logic. Within this context, Clarissa's responses become both plausible and sympathetic. In answering the second question, the essay focuses McEwan's difficult balancing act with Joe's retrospective narration: McEwan wants to demonstrate both that Joe is reliable about the major issues and that Joe is privileging his perspective over Clarissa's. Intelligent readers may focus on Joe's reliability more than his partisanship, and, therefore, find McEwan's handling of Clarissa to be flawed. The essay concludes by suggesting that this comparison and contrast between the approaches is implicitly an argument for the value of putting them in dialogue with each other.
James Phelan (Tue,) studied this question.