POSTMODERN PROBLEMATIZATION OF HISTORY AND FICTION IN KAZUO ISHIGURO'S THE REMAINS OF THE DAY

Abstract

The role of history and momentous historical events in the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro is indisputable. Always in the background, complementing the plot, history intertwines with it to build an unbreakable whole. Within the context of Kazuo Ishiguro–s novel The Remains of the Day, relying on the postulates of Linda Hutcheon–s historiographic metafiction, presented in A Poetics of Postmodernism – History, Theory, Fiction, we will be particularly addressing the relationship between the public and private, i.e. personal history; the dialogue between the past and the present; unreliability of memory; revaluation of the past; perspective and pluralism of truths in postmodernism. In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro gives a voice to an individual with a somewhat limited access to historical events, who, despite the fact that he is, from the historical point of view, insignificant, still ends up a tragic victim of grandiose schemes and affairs. As a compelling example of blending fictional and historical elements, this novel provides a subjective vision of history from the perspective of a marginal figure of a butler, which adds a postmodern dimension to the entire story. Thus, The Remains of the Day, through Stevens– biased narrative tinted by guilty conscience and personal disappointment, perfectly illustrate the main hypothesis of this paper – namely, that postmodern literature brings into question the absolute ascertainability, reliability and objectivity of history.