MEMORY AND SPACE IN KAZUO ISHIGURO'S NOVEL "THE BURIED GIANT": INTERMEDIAL ASPECT

Yaryna Oprisnyk

doi:10.23856/4807

Abstract

The aim of the article is to investigate the phenomenon of intermediality in 2015 novel The Buried Giant by the British writer Kazuo Ishiguro. Particular attention is paid to the notion of “literary cinematographicness” (also known as cinematic or filmic mode), which is defined as the use of cinematic techniques and effects in literature, thus creating the effect of multimodality, with a dramatic-intensive flow of events in the text. Analyzing examples from Ishiguro’s novel, the article focuses on such elements of literary cinematographicness as the prevalent audio-visual modality, with an in-depth semantics of sensory images and characters’ non-verbal language; the abundance of audial and visual special effects; as well as incorporating different shots sizes, perspectives, and angles that produce the effect of multidimensional space in the recipient’s mind. Furthermore, the novel’s central motif of memory and recollections determines its non-linear chronotope, with such cinematic techniques as montage, dynamic frame shots, and flashbacks becoming instrumental in depicting the complex spatio-temporal relations between the scattered scenes and images.

Highlights

Contemporary literature demonstrates a growing tendency of actively borrowing artistic effects and strategies of other art forms, a phenomenon known as intermediality, which is based on Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the interaction of different “media”, i.e., different channels of human communication
The predominant audio-visuality through the abundance of sensory images and special effects motivates the pronounced multimodality of the text, with a multitude of images and sounds becoming the primary expressions of nonverbalized psychological and symbolic meaning
Thereby, the artistic effect on the reader consists in the need to constantly visualize the described images and interpret their complex multilevel semantics as based on the person’s emotional intelligence and socio-cultural experience of such phenomena

Summary

Introduction

Contemporary literature demonstrates a growing tendency of actively borrowing artistic effects and strategies of other art forms, a phenomenon known as intermediality, which is based on Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the interaction of different “media”, i.e., different channels of human communication. Thereby, each word contains “various semantic and axiological content” (Bakhtin, 2010: 288) that indicates one’s occupational sphere, features of a particular group, or worldview, which is actualized in a dialogue, i.e., any exchange of information or ideas between people In this regard, various seemingly simple phenomena often have additional dimensions of abstract, socially, and culturally conditioned meanings, where “the dialectics of the object are interwoven with the social dialogue surrounding it” (Bakhtin, 2010: 278). The most multifaceted example of intermediality in literature is literary cinematographicness ( termed as cinematic or filmic mode), whereby authors of fiction imitate the techniques and effects of cinema to dynamize the narrative, employing the reader’s natural ability of visualizing the described sensory images with subsequent reconstruction of their invisible semantics. Methodology: the purpose of the study led to the choice of the following methods and approaches: intermedial approach, dialogism, narratology, receptive aesthetics, hermeneutics, and close reading

The notion of literary cinematographicness and its constituents

Literary cinematographicness in Ishiguro’s novel The Buried Giant

Conclusions