M.A. / This study was prompted principally by two events: reading Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1989), and encountering Pico lyer's Time article "The Empire Writes Back" (1993). lyer argues that the late twentieth century has been witness to an important event in the world of literature: the emergence of a new generation of writers writing in English, but not necessarily originating from British-colonial (or postcolonial) backgrounds. Among the writers lyer mentions are Vikram Seth, Michael Ondaatje, Ben Okri and - most notably - Kazuo Ishiguro. Ishiguro was born in Japan but emigrated with his parents to the United Kingdom at the age of six. This study focuses on his biculturalism and the impact that his mixed upbringing has had on his style and thematic concerns. This forms the principal focus of the first part of the study. The influence of Japanese writers, that of Japanese film and, finally, that of the European literary tradition are looked at in turn. The core of this study is a comparative analysis of Ishiguro's first three novels: A Pale View of Hills (1982), An Artist of the Floating World (1986), and The Remains of the Day (1989). Here certain common pre-occupations are identified and discussed - chiefly, Ishiguro's concern with memory, with constructions of the past, and his use of "unreliable" first-person narrators. It is argued that Ishiguro returns insistently to these thematic concerns in his first three novels, and that they can therefore be seen as constituting a three-part exploration of the notion of memory, of "reconstructing" the past. A separate chapter briefly examines Ishiguro's most recent work, The Unconsoled (1995), in which these themes are once again present, although they are bodied forth in a strikingly different style. The purpose of examining this novel is mainly to illustrate its formal and stylistic divergence from the first three (far more successful) novels - a divergence which in turn serves to throw into relief the thematic integrity of the first three novels. The study concludes by drawing together the discussion of the first three novels before moving on to a consideration of Ishiguro's place in what has become known as "New Internationalism". Here it is argued that Ishiguro's work has important resemblances to that of other writers loosely grouped into this literary movement and that he deserves his place among this illustrious group of writers who are changing the face of world literature written in English.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-03-31Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:53:10Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 capellatojunior_el_me_arafcl.pdf: 276039 bytes, checksum: 43006ced07fc1f75b1fe226bee0f10fa (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Este trabalho analisa o romance When We Were Orphans, de produção do escritor Kazuo Ishiguro, focando o emprego da memória no texto literário, como forma de examinar as estratégias empregadas pelo escritor. A principal preocupação estética do autor britânico volta-se para a maneira como seus personagens lêem e interpretam suas histórias de vida e para como eles percebem as forças que conduzem seus destinos e como reescrevem tais detalhes. A estratégia narrativa adotada é a do emprego da memória marcando a percepção a posteriori que caracteriza o relato. O estudo, portanto, aponta a técnica narrativa ligada aos processos psíquicos constituintes da memória, e auxilia na exposição do sofrimento humano, na crítica sutil ao imperialismo e colonialismo do século XX, tema e motivo de seus romances. Dessa forma, o autor enfatiza as técnicas que as pessoas usam para encobrir e às vezes até para suprimir suas emoções e, em particular, a maneira pela qual tais emoções são estimuladas pela memória. O trabalho terá como suporte teórico os estudos freudianos sobre a memória, o estranho e as experiências ocorridas na infância, particularmente considerando a atuação do narrador, o personagem Christopher Banks, como foco central. / This study analyses the novel When We Were Orphans, as part of the writer Kazuo Ishiguro’s production, focusing the application of the memory in the literary text, as a form of examining the strategies used by the author. The British author’s main aesthetical concern is turned to how his characters read and interpret their life story, and to how they apprehend the forces which lead their destiny, and how they write such details. The adopted narrative strategy is one which engages memory, determining the posteriori perception that characterizes the narration. The study, therefore, indicates the narrative technique linked to psychical processes which constitute memory, and help with the exposition of the human anguish; with the subtle criticism to the 20th century’s imperialism and colonialism, theme and motif of his novels. For that reason, the author emphasizes the techniques people use to cover, and sometimes even to supply their emotions and, particularly the way from which such emotions are aroused by memory. The paper shall have, as theoretical support, the Freudian studies about memory, the strange and the experience occurred during childhood, especially considering the narrator’s performance, the character Christopher Banks., as essential focus.

Gerald Dworkin's influential account of Personal Autonomy offers the following two conditions for autonomy: (i) Authenticity - the condition that one identify with one's beliefs, desires and values after a process of critical reflection, and (ii) Procedural Independence - the identification in (i) must not be "influenced in ways which make the process of identification in some way alien to the individual" (Dworkin 1989:61). I argue in this thesis that there are cases which fulfil both of Dworkin's conditions, yet are clearly not cases of autonomy. Specifically, I argue that we can best assess the adequacy of Dworkin's account of autonomy through literature, because it provides a unique medium for testing his account on the very terms he sets up for himself - ie. that autonomy apply to, and make sense of, persons leading lives of a certain quality. The examination of two novels - Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady - shows that Dworkin's explanation of identification and critical reflection is inadequate for capturing their role in autonomy and that he does not pay enough attention to the role of external factors in preventing or supporting autonomy. As an alternative, I offer the following two conditions for autonomy: (i) critical reflection of a certain kind - radical reflection, and (ii) the ability to translate the results of (i) into action - competence. The novels demonstrate that both conditions are dependent upon considerations of the content of one's beliefs, desires, values etc. Certain of these will prevent or hinder the achievement of autonomy because of their content, so autonomy must be understood in relation to substantial considerations, rather than in purely formal terms, as Dworkin argues.

Résumé du roman: La fréquentation de l'horreur et de la violence ont épuisé Damien Martel, photographe de guerre. Après un tragique incident qui le touche de proche, il glisse lentement vers le désespoir. Le directeur de son agence de presse l'envoie se reposer à Québec, avec la mission d'écrire un roman dans lequel il réglera leur compte aux démons qui le hantent. Dès les premiers instants de son séjour, Damien rencontre des personnages bien réels qui se sont donné rendez-vous pour lui faire revisiter le passé. Certains pourraient s'être échappés d'une bande dessinée, d'autres d'un récit d'aventures. Heureusement, tout le monde finit par trouver sa place dans l'éternel roman de la vie. Résumé de l'essai: L'entrelacement de la musique et de la littérature romanesque n'est plus à découvrir. De nombreux auteurs ont pratiqué la musicalité dans la fiction, que ce soit sous forme de thématique musicale ou d'analogie formelle. L'usage de variations sophistiquées sur un thème initial et la composition en contrepoint propres à la fugue invitent à s'interroger sur les chemins communs parcourus par les deux arts. Le roman Auprès de moi toujours de Kazuo Ishiguro sert d'exemple dans cet essai pour étayer l'intuition de la narration contrapuntique. L'auteur de ce mémoire propose cet essai à la suite du roman intitulé La violoncelliste est disparue, qui ne prétend pas à la forme musicale, mais certainement à sa thématique.

This dissertation analyzes how twentieth- and early twenty-first- century novelists respond to the English landscape through their presentation of narrative and their experiments with novelistic form. Opening with a discussion of the English planning movement, "Narrative Topography" reveals how shifting perceptions of the structure of English space affect the content and form of the contemporary novel. The first chapter investigates literary responses to the English landscape between the World Wars, a period characterized by rapid suburban growth. It reveals how Virginia Woolf, in Mrs. Dalloway and Between the Acts, reconsiders which narrative choices might be appropriate for mobilizing and critiquing arguments about the relationship between city, country, and suburb. The following chapters focus on responses to the English landscape during the present era. The second chapter argues that W. G. Sebald, in The Rings of Saturn, constructs rural Norfolk and Suffolk as containing landscapes of horror--spaces riddled with sinkholes that lead his narrator to think about near and distant acts of violence. As Sebald intimates that this forms a porous "landscape" in its own right, he draws attention to the fallibility of representation and the erosion of cultural memory. The third chapter focuses on Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, a novel in which a cloned human being uses descriptions of landscape to express and, more often, to suppress the physical and emotional pain associated with her position in society. By emphasizing his narrator's proclivity towards euphemism and pastiche, Ishiguro intimates that, in an era of mechanical and genetic reproduction, reliance on perspectives formed in past and imagined futures can be quite deadly. The fourth chapter analyzes Ian McEwan's post 9/11 novel, Saturday--a reworking of Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. In reading these two novels side-by-side, it reveals how London, its suburbs, and the English countryside might be imagined differently in the contemporary consciousness. Together these chapters investigate why novelistic treatments of the English landscape might interest contemporary readers who live outside England (and/or read these works in translation), especially during an era in which the English landscape has ceased to function as the real or metaphorical center of empire.