Наслеђе 61 (2025) [185-194]
АУТОР(И) / AUTHOR(S):Marija B. Nešić 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46793/NasKg2561.185N
САЖЕТАК /ABSTRACT:
In his novel Lessons (2022), Ian McEwan prompts readers to reflect on how private lives are shaped by political and historical forces. Through the life of his alter-ego, Roland Baines – a white, middle-class British man born in 1948, raised partly in colonial Libya, and educated in a traditional boarding school – McEwan examines the psychic and ethical effects of living through the aftermath of empire, the Cold War, and global crises such as the Chernobyl disaster, 9/11, Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper approaches Lessons through Paul Gilroy’s concept of postcolonial melancholia, which describes Britain’s unresolved relationship with its imperial past, manifesting in nostalgia, disorientation, and the repression of colonial memory. The paper argues that McEwan’s portrayal of Roland embodies guilt, anxiety, and ethical paralysis as he struggles to make sense of his life in broader historical narratives. The novel demonstrates how individuals are shaped by the legacies of empire, and how personal memory becomes entangled with the burdens of national and global histories. By focusing on the intersections between the global and the personal within the context of postcolonial melancholia, this paper examines contemporary Britain’s failure to reckon with its colonial history and the lessons embedded in the past traumas.
КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ / KEYWORDS:
postcolonial melancholia; empire; global; personal; Ian McEwan; Lessons.
ПРОЈЕКАТ / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
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