scholarly journals THE ONEIRIC SPACE OF KAZUO ISHIGURO’S NOVEL ‘THE BURIED GIANT’

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 100-106
Author(s):  
Alina A. Mikheikina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
Vertical Organization ◽  
Memory Characteristic ◽  
Topological Characteristics ◽  
Fictional Space

The article provides a detailed study of the fictional space of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Buried Giant. There are identified the features that give this aspect of the chronotope of the novel an oneiric character. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of certain loci of the novel’s fictional space, their toponymic and semiotic characteristics. Among the artistic means that actualize the oneiric space in the text, there are distinguished the peculiarities of the narrative level (first-person narration, representation of the events through the consciousness of the characters) and the features of the artistic expression and visualization of the novel’s fictional world: incorporation of mythological elements, metaphorization and generalization of the fictional space, emphasis on its horizontal and vertical organization. Some of the mythological characters are considered in the paper in terms of the additional meanings they contribute to the novel. Some motifs actualized by incorporation of mythological elements are also examined. A comprehensive analysis allowed us to reveal that the oneiric nature determines the topological characteristics of the novel. In addition, the oneiric space in The Buried Giant performs the function of representing the work of mnemonic mechanisms, which determines the connection of the considered aspect of poetics with the author’s intention, as well as with the theme of memory, characteristic not only of the analyzed novel but of the writer’s works as a whole. The study has also revealed an analogy in the representation of the chronotope with previous works by Kazuo Ishiguro, which allows us, among other things, to conclude that the actualization of the oneiric space is an important feature of the author’s artistic method.

scholarly journals Exhuming the Narrator in 'The Buried Giant': Genre and Intertextual Inference in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jay Campbell Forlong
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
General Public ◽  
First Person ◽  
Identity Performance ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
James Phelan

<p>This thesis takes the critical response generated by Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, his most recent novel, as an invitation to re-examine the overall literary ‘experiment’ of his body of work. Ishiguro’s novels, regardless of their genre, message, or cultural moment, create experiences in which the reader engages with each narrator as if they were a human being. His attention to stylistic and formal detail foregrounds our awareness of his art in each text, and much scholarship focuses on overarching discussions of memory, identity, and history; however, this all relies upon the empathy that the texts generate between the character-narrator and the reader. The commitment to mimesis over the synthetic or thematic dimensions of the text, to draw on the theoretical model of character presented by James Phelan, often remains covert throughout each novel, but character mimesis nevertheless acts as both an accessible entry point to the novels, and a consistent touchstone throughout and across the texts.  Upon the publication of The Buried Giant, Ishiguro was met with criticism and dissatisfaction from numerous reviewers and scholars, despite general public appreciation of the novel. At the heart of this dissatisfaction lies a sense that Ishiguro’s foray into fantasy lacks the affective power of his iconic artlessness. Specifically, The Buried Giant appears to lack a central, consistent, human voice to hold together the synthetic and thematic work that the text performs.  This thesis presents an argument that finds within The Buried Giant the presence of a first-person voice that, rather than diverging from each of Ishiguro’s previous narrators, takes his experimentation with the first-person voice to a new extreme. This reading allows me to locate The Buried Giant more squarely back in conversation with the rest of Ishiguro’s oeuvre, by identifying a covert but vital thread that exists beneath the shifts in genre, thematic and synthetic choices, and context of the novel. I explore the establishment of character mimesis across Ishiguro’s body of work, how this feeds into both the dissatisfaction with The Buried Giant and my reconciliation of the novel to his earlier works, and finally how The Buried Giant and its shift to both a covert narrative voice and the genre of fantasy provides an opportunity to re-examine Ishiguro’s use of non-mimetic structures and generic conventions in his first six novels around the central, mimetic narrator.  As suggested, this approach draws significantly on the theory of character presented by James Phelan, which allows for comprehensive consideration of diverse textual functions that occur both throughout a given text and across several texts of widely varying genres and perspectives. I touch on notions of unreliability, memory and subjective history, trauma, and identity performance, each of which are central to many pieces of scholarship on Ishiguro’s novels; however, the aim of this project is to swiftly push beyond readings that prioritise synthetic and thematic dimensions of the novels to reach the heart of how the voices who capture their own stories completely entrance Ishiguro’s readership.</p>

scholarly journals Exhuming the Narrator in 'The Buried Giant': Genre and Intertextual Inference in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jay Campbell Forlong
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
General Public ◽  
First Person ◽  
Identity Performance ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
James Phelan

<p>This thesis takes the critical response generated by Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, his most recent novel, as an invitation to re-examine the overall literary ‘experiment’ of his body of work. Ishiguro’s novels, regardless of their genre, message, or cultural moment, create experiences in which the reader engages with each narrator as if they were a human being. His attention to stylistic and formal detail foregrounds our awareness of his art in each text, and much scholarship focuses on overarching discussions of memory, identity, and history; however, this all relies upon the empathy that the texts generate between the character-narrator and the reader. The commitment to mimesis over the synthetic or thematic dimensions of the text, to draw on the theoretical model of character presented by James Phelan, often remains covert throughout each novel, but character mimesis nevertheless acts as both an accessible entry point to the novels, and a consistent touchstone throughout and across the texts.  Upon the publication of The Buried Giant, Ishiguro was met with criticism and dissatisfaction from numerous reviewers and scholars, despite general public appreciation of the novel. At the heart of this dissatisfaction lies a sense that Ishiguro’s foray into fantasy lacks the affective power of his iconic artlessness. Specifically, The Buried Giant appears to lack a central, consistent, human voice to hold together the synthetic and thematic work that the text performs.  This thesis presents an argument that finds within The Buried Giant the presence of a first-person voice that, rather than diverging from each of Ishiguro’s previous narrators, takes his experimentation with the first-person voice to a new extreme. This reading allows me to locate The Buried Giant more squarely back in conversation with the rest of Ishiguro’s oeuvre, by identifying a covert but vital thread that exists beneath the shifts in genre, thematic and synthetic choices, and context of the novel. I explore the establishment of character mimesis across Ishiguro’s body of work, how this feeds into both the dissatisfaction with The Buried Giant and my reconciliation of the novel to his earlier works, and finally how The Buried Giant and its shift to both a covert narrative voice and the genre of fantasy provides an opportunity to re-examine Ishiguro’s use of non-mimetic structures and generic conventions in his first six novels around the central, mimetic narrator.  As suggested, this approach draws significantly on the theory of character presented by James Phelan, which allows for comprehensive consideration of diverse textual functions that occur both throughout a given text and across several texts of widely varying genres and perspectives. I touch on notions of unreliability, memory and subjective history, trauma, and identity performance, each of which are central to many pieces of scholarship on Ishiguro’s novels; however, the aim of this project is to swiftly push beyond readings that prioritise synthetic and thematic dimensions of the novels to reach the heart of how the voices who capture their own stories completely entrance Ishiguro’s readership.</p>

Manifestations of the bias of an unreliable narrator in novel by V. Domontovich “Doctor Serafikus”

2018 ◽  
pp. 132-138
Author(s):  
М. І. Підодвірна
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Personal Interest ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Personal Story ◽  
Unreliable Narrator ◽  
German Researcher ◽  
Different Levels

The results and achievements of the main schools and directions of naratology indicate the need to reread both well-known and recondite texts in order to spell out the meanings. We believe that the narrative analysis of prose by Victor Domontovich (the Ukrainian intellectual writer) is interesting and relevant. The article attempts to characterize the manifestations of the bias of an unreliable narato in the novel “Doctor Seraficus” based on the A. Nyuninga’s cognitive approach. A modern German researcher provides a set of tools that can supplemented for a multidimensional consideration of all ambiguities and contradictions in the text. An intelligent game that unfolds in the text manifests itself at different levels. V. Domontovych conducts the biggest game, the game with meaning through the pending authority of unreliable presenter. The text of the novel consists of abstract reflections, notes, dreams, illusions, fantasies, dreams and retrospective journeys. The main law of the text is the game. Irony and contradictions in the narrator’s words encourage the reader to feel dissonance, uncertainty. Therefore, in a narrative analysis, attention is focused on the speaker and who sees (the focal point). It was investigated that the artist Corvin is the narrator of the novel “Doctor Serafikus”, he tries to give as much as possible objectively the personal story. The motives for the unreliability narration based on the personal interest and bias of the character are determined. We identified the main symptoms of the unreliability of the narrator in the work, and the different levels at which the corresponding narrative is expressed, are highlighted. It is established that an unreliable narrative forces distancing itself from a narrator and takes everything that has been said with caution and detachment. Detailed narrative analysis of the work sheds light on the meanings, which for some reason masked, and allows you to establish artistic functions of an unreliable narrator. We believe that understanding this phenomenon makes it possible to make a comprehensive analysis of artistic text.

The use of second person pronouns in a literary work

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen de Hoop ◽  
Lotte Hogeweg
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Pronoun

AbstractFor this study we investigated all occurrences of Dutch second person pronoun subjects in a literary novel, and determined their interpretation. We found two patterns that can both be argued to be functionally related to the de-velopment of the story. First, we found a decrease in the generic use of second person, a decrease which we believe goes hand in hand with an increased distancing of oneself as a reader from the narrator/main character. Second, we found an increase in the use of the descriptive second person. The increased descriptive use of second person pronouns towards the end of the novel is very useful for the reader, because the information provided by the first person narrator himself becomes less and less reliable. Thus, the reader depends more strongly on information provided by other characters and what these characters tell the narrator about himself.

Divi pirmās personas stāstījumi Osvalda Zebra romānā „Māra”

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-208
Author(s):  
Daiga Zirnīte
Keyword(s):  
Young Woman ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Growth Path ◽  
Dramatic Structure

The aim of the study is to define how and to what effect the first-person narrative form is used in Oswald Zebris’s novel “Māra” (2019) and how the other elements of the narrative support it. The analysis of the novel employs both semiotic and narratological ideas, paying in-depth attention to those elements of the novel’s structure that can help the reader understand the growth path and power of the heroine Māra, a 16-year-old young woman entangled in external and internal conflict. As the novel is predominantly written from the title character’s point of view, as she is the first-person narrator in 12 of the 16 chapters of the novel, the article reveals the principle of chapter arrangement, the meaning of the second first-person narrator (in four novel chapters) and the main points of the dramatic structure of the story. Although in interviews after the publication of the novel, the author Zebris has emphasised that he has written the novel about a brave girl who at her 16 years is ready to make the decisions necessary for her personal growth, her open, candid, and emotionally narrated narrative creates inner resistance in readers, especially the heroine’s peers, and therefore makes it difficult to observe and appreciate her courage and the positive metamorphosis in the dense narrative of the heroine’s feelings, impressions, memories, imaginary scenes, various impulses and comments on the action. It can be explained by the form of narration that requires the reader to identify with the narrator; however, it is cumbersome if the narrator’s motives, details, and emotions, expressed openly and honestly, are unacceptable, incomprehensible, or somehow exaggerated.

Violence, Memory, and History: Geoffrey of Monmouth and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-344
Author(s):  
Jonathan Brent
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Geoffrey Of Monmouth ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

Kazuo Ishiguro has suggested that his work of medieval fantasy, The Buried Giant (2015), draws on a “quasi-historical” King Arthur, in contrast to the Arthur of legend. This article reads Ishiguro’s novel against the medieval work that codified the notion of an historical King Arthur, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1139). Geoffrey’s History offered a largely fictive account of the British past that became the most successful historiographical phenomenon of the English Middle Ages. The Buried Giant offers an interrogation of memory that calls such “useful” constructions of history into question. The novel deploys material deriving from Geoffrey’s work while laying bear its methodology; the two texts speak to each other in ways sometimes complementary, sometimes deconstructive. That Ishiguro’s critique can be applied to Geoffrey’s History points to recurrent strategies of history-making, past and present, whereby violence serves as a mechanism for the creation of historical form.

scholarly journals Boden Black (A Novel) and With Axe and Pen in the New Zealand Alps: Differences Between Overseas and New Zealand Written Accounts of Climbing Mount Cook 1882-1920 and the Emergence of a New Zealand Voice in Mountaineering Literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jura Fearnley
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Southern Alps ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Mackenzie Basin

<p>This thesis has two components: creative and critical. The creative component is the novel Boden Black. It is a first person narrative, imagined as a memoir, and traces the life of its protagonist, Boden Black, from his childhood in the late 1930s to adulthood in the present day. The plot describes various significant encounters in the narrator’s life: from his introduction to the Mackenzie Basin and the Mount Cook region in the South Island of New Zealand, through to meetings with mountaineers and ‘lost’ family members. Throughout his journey from child to butcher to poet, Boden searches for ways to describe his response to the natural landscape. The critical study is titled With Axe and Pen in the New Zealand Alps. It examines the published writing of overseas and New Zealand mountaineers climbing at Aoraki/Mount Cook between 1882 and 1920. I advance the theory that there are stylistic differences between the writing of overseas and New Zealand mountaineers and that the beginning of a distinct New Zealand mountaineering voice can be traced back to the first accounts written by New Zealand mountaineers attempting to reach the summit of Aoraki/Mount Cook. The first mountaineer to attempt to climb Aoraki/Mount Cook was William Spotswood Green, an Irishman who introduced high alpine climbing to New Zealand in 1882. Early New Zealand mountaineers initially emulated the conventions of British mountaineering literature as exemplified by Green and other famous British mountaineers. These pioneering New Zealand mountaineers attempted to impose the language of the ‘civilised’ European alpine-world on to the ‘uncivilised’ world of the Southern Alps. However, as New Zealand mountaineering became more established at Aoraki/Mount Cook from the 1890s through to 1920, a distinct New Zealand voice developed in mountaineering literature: one that is marked by a sense of connection to place expressed through site-specific, factual observation and an unadorned, sometimes laconic, vernacular writing style.</p>

scholarly journals “The Handmaid’s Tale”: a legal-literary essay

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-147
Author(s):  
Clarice Beatriz da Costa Söhngen ◽  
Danielle Massulo Bordignon
Keyword(s):  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fictional Space ◽  
Second Wave

This paper proposes an analysis of the legal aspects present in the narrative of “The Handmaid´s Tale”, a novel by Margaret Atwood. First published in 1985, and heavily influenced by second-wave feminism, “The Handmaid´s Tale” addresses, mainly, the matter of gender inequality, once it creates a reality in which fertile women are compelled to reproduce through a servitude system. Through a rupture with the Cartesian dichotomy whose dualist notion separates objectivity from subjectivity, reason from emotion, this paper exposes that this oppression is not a literary creation by Atwood, but a reproduction of the power relations put forward in the history of humankind. In this regard, it is explored how Literature can aid the Law in facing the questions that come up in the resolution of legal and social problems. Besides gender inequality, it is possible to spot in the novel several violations concerning the principle of human dignity. Therefore, this research analyzes the legal provisions taken in the fictional space of Gilead, as well as in the country that preceded it, the United States of America, as well as in Brazil. In addition, it studies the symbolic violence to which women are submitted in Gilead and how it relates to the experiences lived by contemporary Brazilian women.

scholarly journals Rumi, Sufi spirituality and the teacher–disciple relationship in Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Gray
Keyword(s):  
Artistic Expression ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Teacher Student ◽  
Teacher Student Relationship ◽  
Student Relationship ◽  
Anglophone World ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

In William Patrick Patterson’s Struggle of the Magicians, a detailed study of the relationship between the prominent figures of Western esotericism, G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky, he writes ‘Only in a time as confused as ours could one think that the teacher–student relationship – an archetypal and sacred form – exists as an option, rather than a necessary requirement, a station on the way’ (1997: 92). My paper examines the numerous ways in which the famous teacher–disciple relationship that existed between Muhammad Jalal ad-Din, known to the anglophone world as Rumi, and his spiritual guide and mentor, Shams of Tabriz, is represented in Elif Shafak’s novel The Forty Rules of Love (2010) and how her depiction of this relationship is predicated upon her knowledge of, and belief in, the general principles of what can be termed ‘Western Sufism’. Although she had previously thematised elements of Sufi dialectics in her earlier fiction and clear, if minor, references to Sufi philosophy permeated novels such as The Bastard of Istanbul (2007), Shafak’s fascination with the teachings of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz reaches its culmination and most significant artistic expression in The Forty Rules of Love. Published in 2010, the novel situates a fictionalised representation of the relationship between Rumi and Shams at the centre of the narrative and provides an overt depiction of the emanationalist, perennialist and universalist ethics contained within Sufi dialectics. In addition, given that Shafak’s text represents one of the more prominent and commercially successful contributions to what Amira El-Zein (2010: 71–85) has called ‘the Rumi phenomenon’ my paper examines how, in privileging the aesthetics and the interests of American readers over conveying a more complete and more nuanced image of Sufism, Shafak succumbs to the oversimplification and decontextualisation of Rumi’s teachings perpetrated by the Western popularisers of his work.

scholarly journals The Catch of the Hyperreal: Yossarian and the Ideological Vicissitudes of Hyperreality

Text Matters ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 386-410
Author(s):  
Abdolali Yazdizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
American Life ◽  
Ideological Discourse ◽  
Catch 22

Hyperreality is a key term in Jean Baudrillard’s cultural theory, designating a phase in the development of image where it “masks the absence of a profound reality.” The ambiance of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) closely corresponds to Baudrillard’s notion of the hyperreal as images persist to precede reality in the fictional world of the novel. Since for Baudrillard each order of simulacra produces a certain mode of ideological discourse that impacts the perception of reality, it is plausible that the characters of this fictional context should be ideologically impacted by the hyperreal discourse. From this vantage point it is possible to have a new critical assessment of Yossarian’s (protagonist) antiheroic stance and study the role of the “business of illusion,” whose ideological edifice is based on the discourse of the hyperreal, on his antiheroic stance and actions. By drawing on Baudrillard’s cultural theory this paper aims to read Heller’s novel as a postmodern allegory of rebellion against the hyperreality of the twentieth-century American life and trace its relevance to modern-day U.S.

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