1

Synopsis

Interplay of the Realistic and the Speculative Elements in the Select Novels of

Kazuo Ishiguro

To

Dr. Nazia Hassan (Supervisor)

Dept. Of English

Aligarh Muslim University

Aligarh

By

Rameez Ahmad Bhat

GG 9986

17 PhD 01

2017-18
 2

Kazuo Ishiguro, 2017 Nobel Laureate, is an Anglo-Japanese novelist who dabbles in

writing plays, short stories and songs and about whom the permanent secretary of the Academy

declared right away after the announcement:

If you mix Jane Austen and Kafka, you have Ishiguro – but you have to add a little bit of

Marcel Proust into the mix, and then you stir, but not too much, and then you have his

writings. He’s developed an aesthetic universe all his own. He is exploring what you have

to forget in order to survive in the first place as an individual or as a society. (qtd. in

Charles 1)

He commenced his artistic career with writing of short stories and television dramas. It is,

however, for his “intricately crafted, hauntingly evocative, psychologically compelling novels

for which he is best known and most critically esteemed” (Shaffer 2). To date, he has published

seven novels and a short story collection. His major novels deal with the narratives of people

belong to two cultures he himself is part of—Japanese and British. This thesis shall take seven

novels of Ishiguro as its primary material: A Pale View of Hills (1982), An Artist of the Floating

World (1986), The Remains of the Day (1989), When We Were Orphans (2000), The Unconsoled

(1995), Never Let Me Go (2005) and The Buried Giant (2015). It aims to explore the interplay of

realistic and speculative elements in these novels and the aspects related to both of them: history,

trauma, nostalgia, alternate reality, sci-fi, fantasy and futurism. The above quoted claim that “if

you mix Austen and Kafka, you have Ishiguro” perhaps underscores the two aspects this thesis

endeavours to investigate. Until quite recently the division between the two, realist or mimetic

literature and speculative or non-mimetic, had been apparent and the former much applauded.

Thus notes down Marek Oziewicz, “the desire to imitate reality with such verisimilitude that the

audience can share the artist’s experience . . . has been the aspiration of much Western art since
 3

Plato and Aristotle, whose pronouncements considered literature valuable when it seeks direct

correspondence to life” (03). This thesis undertakes to demonstrate how, why, and to what extent

Ishiguro succeeds in employing both to portray the experiences and concerns of our age.

Objectives

The aim of the thesis is to:

● Study the interplay of realistic and speculative elements

● Explore various aspects related to realistic fiction: history, nostalgia and trauma

● Investigate diverse facets of speculative fiction: fantasy, sci-fi, alternate history, and

futurism

● Examine the subversion of elitist, hierarchical, patriarchal, colonialist historiography

Literature Review

Classical theory of decorum had at its centre the idea the separation of genres or “kinds”

as they were called. There must be no “mixing” of genres (Abrams 148). Not only did it decide

what the form should be but also the subject matter which founded on idea of the hierarchical

view of society. But with the emergence, writes M. H. Abrams, in the eighteenth of the new

kinds of literary productions such as novel this theory was radically challenged (149). Kazuo

Ishiguro has also defied this theory and has shifted in his novels from one mode to another which

have puzzled many readers. His novels, in particular, have inspired a considerable body of

critical scholarship. Amidst the articles, dissertations, and chapters are two books that have

established a psychological framework for analysing Ishiguro’s work: Barry Lewis’s Kazuo

Ishiguro and Brian W. Shaffer’s Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro. Writing about his first four

novels, the underlying idea, Shaffer has shown, is repression (1-11); and the displacement by

Lewis (Cappo 2).

Mike Petry, in Narratives of Memory and Identity: The Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro (1999),
 4

provides thorough textual and narratological analyses of his first three novels. Writing about The Remains

of the Day Kathleen Wall has shown the “challenges” posed by it to “the theories of unreliability” (1).

Though countless well researched scholarly works have been done on his novels, however, less seems to

have been done on what I shall undertake to look into: the interplay of realism and speculation.

Research Methods

The research methods will consist of analysing and interpreting primary sources in

exploring the said themes. It will also investigate the theories related to and debates surrounding

realistic or mimetic and speculative or non-mimetic literature and explore their respective

epistemologies. It will support the findings with a significant number of historical, political, and

social materials. It shall also employ discourses which radically undermined and blurred the

distinction between high and low literature, history and fiction, mimetic and non-mimetic.

Moreover, feminist, postcolonial, subaltern critiques shall be taken up.

Tentative Chapter Division

I. Introduction:

This shall study the interplay of realistic and speculative elements in the novels of Kazuo

Ishiguro. This shall also map out the themes which come under the umbrella terms of realistic

fiction: history, trauma and nostalgia; and speculative fiction: alternate history, fantasy, sci-fi and

futurism.

II. Revisiting and writing back of history: Class and Gender

Three novels, A Pale View of Hills (1982), An Artist of the Floating World (1986) and

The Remains of the Day (1989), shall be taken in this chapter.

III. Trauma and Nostalgia

In this chapter, A Pale View of Things, An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of

the Day, Never Let Me Go, The Buried Giant shall be engaged. This chapter introduces the

concepts of trauma and nostalgia and his treatment of these in his novels.

IV. Speculative Fiction: Alternate Reality and Science Fiction

This chapter engages three novels Never Let Me Go, When We Were Orphans and The

Unconsoled and shall discuss speculative fiction and the way it came into the forefront in literary

studies. It shall explore these novels in the light of alternate reality and sci-fi.

V. Fantasy and Futurism

This chapter A Pale View of Things, Never Let Me Go, The Unconsloed and The Buried

Giant shall take for analysis. It shall introduce the two, fantasy and horror, and provide a brief

sketch of their treatment in English literature in general and novel in particular.

VI. Conclusion

This sums up the whole argument of the thesis. It shall include the points the thesis

endeavours to arrive at. Also it shall put light on the way Ishiguro incorporates diverse

perspectives and voices the voices of those unheard of and silenced. It also maps the way he has

broaden the horizon of fiction witting.

Primary Sources

Ishiguro, Kazuo. An Artist of the Floating [Link] & Faber, 1986.

---. A Pale View of [Link] & Faber, 1982.

---. Never Let Me Go. Faber and Faber, 2005.

---. The Buried [Link] & Faber, 2015.

---. The Remains of the [Link] & Faber, 1989.

---. The Unconsoled, Faber & Faber, 2000.

---. When We Were [Link] & Faber, 2000.

Secondary Sources

Abrams, M. H. and Geoffrey Galt harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Tenth Edition.

Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2012.

Charles, Ron. “Kazuo Ishiguro wins Nobel Prize in literature”. The Washington Post. October 5,

2017. [Link]/entertainment/books/kazuo-ishiguro-wins-nobel-prize-

in-literature/2017/10/05/c9869a30-a91b-11e7-92d1-

58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.abbfc3a8b210

Holmes, Frederick M. “Realism, Dreams and the Unconscious in the Novels of Kazuo

Ishiguro”. The Contemporary British Novel. Edited. James Acheson and Sarah C. E.

Ross. Edinburgh U P, 2005.

Onega, Susana and Ganteau Jean-Michel. Introduction. Ethics and Trauma in Contemporary

British Fiction. Amsterdam NY, 2011.

Oziewicz, Marek. “Speculative Fiction”. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Mar

2017.

/[Link]/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-

9780190201098-e-78

Petry, Mike. Narratives of Memory and Identity: The Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. 1999.

Shaffer, Brian W. Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro. U of South Carolina P, 1998.

Wall, Kathleen. “The Remains of the Day and Its Challenges to Theories of Unreliable

Narration”.

[Link]/stable/30225397