Climate Lyricism

In Climate Lyricism Min Hyoung Song articulates a climate change-centered reading practice that foregrounds how climate is present in most literature. Song shows how literature, poetry, and essays by Tommy Pico, Solmaz Sharif, Frank O’Hara, Ilya Kaminsky, Claudia Rankine, Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Richard Powers, and others help us to better grapple with our everyday encounters with climate change and its disastrous effects, which are inextricably linked to the legacies of racism, colonialism, and extraction. These works employ what Song calls climate lyricism—a mode of address in which a first-person “I” speaks to a “you” about how climate change thoroughly shapes daily life. The relationship between “I” and “you” in this lyricism, Song contends, affects the ways readers comprehend the world, fostering a model of shared agency from which it can become possible to collectively and urgently respond to the catastrophe of our rapidly changing climate. In this way, climate lyricism helps to ameliorate the sense of being overwhelmed and feeling unable to do anything to combat climate change.

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

<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>

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

<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>

Ishiguro’s Japanese-English Identity and His Reception Internationally and in Slovenia

Kazuo Ishiguro is a British author of Japanese descent who has established himself globally as an award-winning writer of bestselling books. This article deals with the hybridity of the author, who is both Japanese and English, a popular writer who stirs reader emotions but is at the same time respected by critics. The article begins by addressing the ‘Japaneseness’ in Ishiguro’s work that is both obvious and skilfully concealed. In the second part, the article examines the reception of Ishiguro’s work by Slovenian readers and discusses potential reasons for their seeming lack of response.

Do clones dream of absent father(s)? Biotechnologia i metafizyka w powieści Nie opuszczaj mnie Kazuo Ishiguro i jej filmowej adaptacji

The article deals with metaphysical aspects of dystopian vision of posthuman and racist socjety presented in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go and its film adaptation. The controversial issue of cloning provokes fundamental questions of what constitutes our existence as human beings and what is the source of overpowering sense of solitude and orphanhood in the “fatherless” world. These questions are being answered in the context of biopolitics (Foucault, Habermas) and its ethical consequences. The paper is intended as a contribution to the ongoing discussion of the human condition and our relation to other beings: machines, animals and… clones.

The Searching for Self-Identity in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

Self-identity is an aspect that every human in the world has. Without it, a person is in danger of being negatively affected by those around him/her and by the outside world. Some people are grappling with this identity-forming phase in their search for self-definition. This is reflected in Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Therefore, this research aims to describe the main characters' search for self-identity as seen in the novel. The type of this research was library research. This research applied a psychological approach, and the data were analyzed using the descriptive qualitative method. The results showed that Kathy and Tommy's quest to find their true selves occurred in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood stages. Narrated by Kathy, she flashed back the memories of how they, Kathy and Tommy, are puzzled because of too many mysteries in Hailsham, the boarding school where they live. They connected each puzzle which could be the answer. But, in the novel, the question they belong to for being different brought them to another question. The process of findings itself flowed as long as they grew. In the end, they found information about their identity as a clone and as an individual.

Children of “Toxic Parents”: An Attempt of Interpretation of “The Unconsoled” by Kazuo Ishiguro

The article constitutes an attempt to interpret the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro The Unconsoled – a work with a complex plot and a multi-threaded structure, typical for a composition stretched on the frame of the rhizome-like labyrinth and the motif of memory imperfections. The labyrinth is a space of strangeness, of being lost. It is a journey of the main character who wanders around various spaces of the city and hotel (which performs a variety of functions), meets many random people and listens to their accounts. The life problems of the city’s inhabitants indicate the eternal truth, according to which a man cannot live without understanding, without talking to someone kind who has the ability to listen. They were looking for someone who would listen and understand them, someone who would kindly respond to their problems. It may also be assumed that living in a world without the feeling of a lack of transcendence, the inhabitants were looking for an authority like a messiah who would indicate the direction of renewal in the world of chaos and who would answer the question: How to live? The novel describes a cultural crisis triggered by the feeling of a fundamental contradiction between the world of scientific truths and the inner world of every human being. Values such as faith, friendship, selflessness, truthfulness or family, to which Ishiguro pays a lot of attention, have been lost. “Toxic parents” are shown in multiple configurations: on the example of Ryder’s parents, or Ryder himself as the father of Boris and Stephan Hoffman. The author shows one of the major causes of the paternity crisis, namely the cult of professional success. Professional success and rivalry connected with it completely absorb Ryder’s life and activities. As a result of the pursuit of professional fulfillment, the role of emotional ties in his life becomes less significant, they almost disappear. It may be assumed that, using the example of the crisis in the described city, Ishiguro presents the contemporary world, which lost the sense of life; however, he did not limit it to the lost past. The world in which all attempts to search for a new form of expression and valorization end in failure. It is a labyrinthine, objectified world which is only given outside, a world of showing off and a “game” of pretending, without honesty and simplicity. It is a place dominated by a pose and culture of narcissism, full of inauthenticity, artificiality and appearance. In addition, The Unconsoled is a poignant novel about human loneliness.

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

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.

SOME FEATURES OF THE NOVEL FORM OF KADZUO ISHIGURO (REMAINING OF THE DAY, DON'T LET ME GO)

The article examines the signs of devaluation of humanism in modern society in the context of multicultural thinking (English - Japanese). The objects of research are the novels of the Nobel (2017) and Booker (1989) Prize writer Kazuo Ishiguro - The Rest of the Day and Don't Let Me Go. In The Rest of the Day, an English writer of Japanese descent inherits and develops the tradition of the English novel, but at the same time synthesizes the peculiarities of the English mentality with the principles of honor and service in the Bushido samurai code. The subtle irony associated with the parallel "code of honor of the English butler and the Japanese samurai," according to the authors of the article, largely explains the logic of the plot of the work. The article also notes that Kazuo Ishiguro managed to reflect the deep commonality of postcolonial Englishness with the refined Japanese perception of being and duty. Although the author himself in his interviews and comments often insists that he remembers almost nothing about Japan and that he is interested in writing on universal topics, this practically always has a shocking effect in his novels. The novel Don't Let Me Go helps to understand that the peculiarity of this work is the proclamation of humanism as one of the main values of mankind at any time and under any conditions. It is noted that this idea is manifested in a conflict with the modern interpretation of the concept. Humanistic values in the novel are also revealed in the inner thoughts of the heroine, the relationship of the heroes, the actions of the heroes, and the author, even in a non-standard anti-utopian situation of ideals, ready to reflect on the moral foundations without which human life is unthinkable. In addition, the motive of man's detachment from his roots, which is very characteristic of Japanese culture, is projected on the modern European vision of the problem.

The english and american gentlemen in ‘the master−butler dyad’ as portrayed in the novel “the remains of the day” by Кazuo i shiguro

In the focus of the article is a comparative sociolinguistic analysis of the speech and manners of the British and American gentlemen as portrayed in the novel The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. The study enables us to look into the deep-rooted English traditions and values against which the American cultural distinctness is brought to light. The underlying British culture ‘the master – butler dyad’ is a marker of the aristocratic culture and us-them divide. The analysis is based on the selection of culturally marked elements of speech and manners of the English lord and the American gentleman (linguistic and extralinguistic) approached from sociolinguistic, semantic, interpretative and comparative perspectives and aimed at revealing common and culturally specific characteristics. The study has demonstrated that the English lord confides in his butler, his manner of interaction is based on the principle of mutual respect and manifested by his voice, always calm and gentle; he actively participates in making pivotal political decisions; his speech is marked by U-words (‘a chap’, adjectives ‘awfully’, ‘terribly’, ‘jolly’, ‘quite’), borrowings and the phenomena of understatement and overstatement. The American gentleman is portrayed as a businesslike and easy going master with a trusting manner of behavior, at the same time always bantering and humiliating a butler, thus putting him in an awkward situation. He is more generous in money spending; his speech is marked by ‘technical language’. Bantering is seen as a symbol of American culture and a new style of life.