A New Historicist Approach to Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans

Year 2017, Volume: 16 Issue: 3, 785 - 795, 31.07.2017

Duygu Serdaroğlu

https://doi.org/10.21547/jss.290611

Abstract

New Historicism, flourishing in the 1980s
as a “new” contemporary literary approach, proposes new viewpoints to the understanding of
history and challenges the conventional understanding of history by pointing
out the private histories. New Historicism deals with the representations of
history rather than the history itself since it believes that there is not one
history but multiple histories. The purpose of this article is to analyze the
representation of history in Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans from the New Historicist viewpoint by focusing
on the concepts of time, memory and narrative technique, hence to reveal how
history is narrated in subjective multiple ways and how personal histories and
public histories are intermingled.

Keywords

New Historicism, representation of history, historicity of texts, textuality of history, memory

Kazuo Ishiguro’nun Çocukluğumu Ararken adlı Romanına Yeni Tarihselci Bir Yaklaşım

Abstract

1980’li
yılların ortasında “yeni” bir edebi teori/yaklaşım olarak ortaya çıkan Yeni
Tarihselcilik kuramı tarih anlayışına yeni bakış açıları sunmaktadır ve öznel
tarih anlayışlarına vurgu yaparak geleneksel tarih anlayışına meydan
okumaktadır. Yeni Tarihselcilik akımı tek bir tarih olmadığına ve çoklu tarih
anlayışına inandığı için tarihin kendisiyle değil tarih(ler)in nasıl temsil
edildiği ile ilgilenmektedir. Bu makalenin amacı Kazuo Ishiguro’nun Çocukluğumu
Ararken adlı romanına Yeni Tarihselcilik edebi teorisi/yaklaşımı
çerçevesinde zaman, bellek ve anlatım tekniği kavramlarına değinerek tarih
temsilini incelemek ve böylece tarihin çeşitli öznel temsilleri ile kişisel ve
genel tarihin nasıl iç içe geçtiğini ortaya çıkartmaktır.

Keywords

Yeni Tarihselcilik, tarih temsili, metnin tarihselleşmesi, tarihin metinselleşmesi, bellek, Kazuo Ishiguro

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