The Narrative Features Of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Early Fictions

Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese-born British writer, is one of the most famous novelists in the contemporary century. He shows much concern for nostalgia and memory of his protagonists. Ishiguro’s early fictions, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, are the case in point. Previous researches at home and abroad on Ishiguro’s early fictions mainly focus on such aspects as culture, interculturality, new-historicism, and post-colonialism. However, studies on Ishiguro’s early fictions from the perspective of narrative theory have been quite scarce. Even, the unique narrative features adopted in Ishiguro’s early fictions have received little systematic discussion relatively. Therefore, this thesis tries to analyze Ishiguro’s narrative features in characterizing Etsuko and Masuji Ono, illustrating their complex and contradictory inner world towards the nostalgia of their past life in Japan in order to have a deeper understanding of Ishiguro’s early fictions based on the Narratology of Gérard Genette.This thesis consists of seven chapters. Chapter one is the biography of Kazuo Ishiguro and overview of his early fictions, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World.Chapter Two states the literature review of Kazuo Ishiguro and his works abroad and at home. It is found that the unique narrative features adopted in Ishiguro’s early fictions have received little systematic discussion relatively.Chapter Three alleges the Narratology as the theoretical framework of this thesis and mainly focuses on the Narratology of Gérard Genette.The following three chapters have a systematic study of Ishiguro’s early fictions from the narratological perspective, which focus on the most prominent narrative features concerning the aspects of narrator, narrative time and narrative discourse.Chapter Four explores the narrative voice of Kazuo Ishiguro’s early novels from the essential concepts of narrator. This part is mainly from two perspectives which are the heterodiegetic narrator and the homodiegetic narrator, and the extradiegetic narrator and the intradiegetic narrator to demonstrate the narrative voice.Chapter Five analyzes the internal organization of narrative tense from the perspective of narrative time. It is from the organizational structure that illustrates narrative features of Ishiguro’s early novels. This part is mainly from narrative order, narrative duration and narrative frequency to demonstrate the internal organization of narrative tense of Ishiguro’s early works.Chapter Six turns to the narrative discourse. It is from how to speak aspect that interprets narrative features in Ishiguro’s fictions. This part is mainly from two main parts,that is, direct speech and free direct speech, and indirect speech and free indirect speech, to carry on the way of narrative discourse in Ishiguro’s early works.Conclusion summarizes all narrative features discussed in previous chapters and makes a brief assessment on them. At the same time, it speaks highly of Ishiguro’s narrative achievements and the theme of nostalgia in his early novels. The selection of narrative voice, the programming of the internal organization of narrative tense and the use of narrative discourse show Ishiguro’s unique narrative features and his artistic accomplishment and success. It is the employments of the unique narrative features that reflect the protagonists’ complex and contradictory inner world towards the nostalgia of their past life in Japan.