Special Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Course outline, autumn term 2010 Tutor: Martin Ryle

Preparing for the course

The most valuable preparation you can make is to read as many as possible of the core
texts (see below) in advance of our first meeting. Be sure to make notes on passages,
themes and questions that especially interest you. If you have time, you should also go
to the Library and browse among the Recommended Reading, find one or two books
that interest you, and read them carefully (again making notes of key points).
I can be contacted at m.h.ryle@sussex.ac.uk – please get in touch if there is
anything you want to know about the course before we meet.

Course outcomes
By the end of the course, successful students will be able to:

Give a complex critical account of Ishiguro’s work, referring to several of his novels
in detail
Discuss Ishiguro’s fiction (especially his four most recent novels) in relation to
novels by leading contemporaries and precursors, both formally and in terms of
its representation of British society
Give a historically informed account of how themes of class, culture and self-
realisation have been represented in novels studied on the course
Show an informed understanding of the concept of fictional realism in relation to
novels studied on the course

Seminars week by week

Our focus in seminars will be on the primary texts (novels by Ishiguro and others). You
should aim to read these before the course, making notes on scenes and aspects that
especially interest you; and to look again at the specified novels in preparation for each
week's seminar.
As well as identifying and discussing themes particularly important in Ishiguro's
work, and comparing his treatment of them with what we find in the other authors
studied, we will interest ourselves especially in the formal qualities of his novels: above
all, in how they engage with, and subvert, the realist conventions which have been
generally dominant in post-1945 literary fiction.
For most seminars, two or three class members will be asked to present a short
informal introduction to specified discussion points. Details will be given in advance of
each seminar. You are invited to write up your seminar presentation and submit it to me
as formative (non-assessed) coursework; if you do, I will be pleased to comment on it.
We will focus on our novel- texts in the following order (dates given are of original
publication; see below for current editions).

1. Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989)

NB: Please come to the first seminar having identified one scene in The Remains of the
Day which interests you and on which you are ready to give a brief commentary.

2. E.M.Forster, Howards End (1910)

3. Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans (2000)

4. Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001)

5. Franz Kafka (transl. J. Underwood), The Castle (1926; this ed. 2007)

6 and 7. Ishiguro, The Unconsoled (1995)

8. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)

9. Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005)

10. We will review the course, discuss leading themes and questions, and make
arrangements for tutorial supervision during the spring and summer terms. You should
aim to come to this seminar having decided on a topic, and preferably a provisional title,
for your assessed essay.
Assessment
The course is assessed by a single 4000-word essay, submitted in the summer term
following the course (check Sussex Direct for details). It is vital that everyone agrees a
title and draws up a preliminary essay plan during or immediately after the course: which
is why you should come to the final seminar with a clear idea of what you want to write
about. Titles will be agreed between student and tutor, but students will be expected to
take the initiative in choosing a topic that interests them. Your essay should discuss two
works of Ishiguro’s in some detail; so long as it meets that proviso, you are welcome to
work on any of the themes we discuss in the course.
You will be expected to meet with the tutor at the end of the spring term to
discuss your progress with the essay, and there will be the opportunity of a further
meeting after Easter if you want one.

Reading

Reading

Primary texts
These are as listed below (where they are given in the order we will study them; dates of
original publication are given). All the novels are currently available in paperback, and
you will need your own copies. Ishiguro is published by Faber; McEwan by Cape (in their
Vintage paperback imprint). The Penguin editions of the novels by Forster and Kafka are
recommended. It is essential that you obtain the Underwood translation of The Castle
(used in the Penguin edition), as other translations give a very different text.

Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989)

E.M.Forster, Howards End (1910)

Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans (2000)

Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001)

Franz Kafka (transl. J. Underwood), The Castle (1926; this ed. 2007).

Ishiguro, The Unconsoled (1995)

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)

Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005)

Recommended and Background reading

There are several books, and numerous articles (many online), on Ishiguro. When you
come to prepare your essay, you may want to consult these; you will find them via the
Library catalogue. I have not included any of the books here but you will find them easily
using the Library catalogue (enter ‘Ishiguro’ as keyword in the standard search system).
You may also like to broaden your knowledge of Ishiguro by reading his first two novels,
A Pale View of Hills (1982) and An Artist of the Floating World (1985), or his recent
(2009) collection of linked stories, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall. Copies
of these are in paperback and in the Library
As background to the course, and in preparing to think through the questions it
raises, an exclusive focus on Ishiguro will not be especially useful. Rather, you should
try to develop your knowledge, and ideas, about the historical development of the novel-
form, and its recent and contemporary practice in Britain; and about theoretical and
critical debates on fictional form, narration and aesthetics. You may want to revisit some
of the general studies of fiction listed in the Handbook for the second year ‘Novel’
course. The books listed below will also be of interest. Some are surveys of English
fiction in the post-war and recent period; others are concerned with the novel as a
cultural and aesthetic form. Gasiorek (1995) draws on a wide range of primary and
secondary materials and is a useful guide to further reading; others again are special
studies of the writers and texts we focus on. A few books and chapters (by Adorno,
Marcuse, Sinfield) are also listed which explore themes, and cultural-historical
developments, related to the topics addressed by the novels we read.
The ‘Recommended Reading’ consists for the most part of chapters from some
of the books listed in ‘Background Reading’. These chapters will be available online to
those taking the course, via the Study Direct course site.
Whichever books and articles you read, you should take note of the bibliographies they
include, which will guide you to many more critical and scholarly sources.
You will find numerous books on Forster, Huxley, and Kafka, and several on
McEwan , by entering their names as Keywords in the Library standard search system.
You will also find a wealth of material on all our authors via the Electronic Library.
Finally, as a contemporary author, Ishiguro is easily found on the Internet. Internet
material never provides trustworthy scholarly discussion, and you should NEVER cut
and paste anything from the Internet into your essay. But the Internet may take you to
some interesting contextual material about the marketing, reception and interpretation of
Ishiguro’s work: interviews and reviews in newspapers, readers’ comments, and news
items. Providing you are careful to acknowledge and reference this material, and avoid
placing much faith in the accuracy of any factual information it offers, it may add a
dimension to your discussion of Ishiguro’s work.

Recommended reading
Adorno, T W ‘Aldous Huxley and Utopia’, p.95-118 in Adorno (1967) Prisms London:
Neville Spearman

Aristotle on ‘The significance of plot’, pp. 28-32 in David Daiches (1956) Critical
Approaches to Literature London: Longmans, Green

Mikhail Bakhtin, from ‘Discourse in the Novel’, pp. 259-309 in Bakhtin (transl. Caryl
Emerson and Michael Holquist) (1981) The Dialogic Imagination Austin: University of
Texas Press

Walter Benjamin ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, pp. 211-244
in Benjamin (1992), Illuminations London: HarperCollins
Shameen Black ‘Ishiguro’s Inhuman Aesthetics’, pp.785-807, Modern Fiction Studies,
Winter 2009

Elizabeth Boa ‘The Castle’, Ch 4 (pp-79) in Julian Preece (ed) (2002) The Cambridge
Companion to Kafka Cambridge: CUP

Malcolm Bradbury ‘Howards End’, pp.128-143 in Malcolm Bradbury (ed) (1966) Forster:
A Collection of Critical Essays Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall

Peter Brooke (1992) Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative London:
Harvard UP

Steven Connor Chapter 1, ‘The Novel in Contemporary History’, pp1-43 in Steven

Connor (1996) The English Novel in History, 1950-1995 London and New York:
Routledge

Elizabeth Ermarth ‘Perspective in Narration’, p38-64 in Elizabeth Ermarth (1983)

Realism and Consensus in the English Novel Princeton: Princeton UP

Andre Gasiorek ‘Realism in the Post-War Period’, Chapter 1 in Andrzej Gąsiorek (1995)
Post-war British Fiction: Realism and After London: Edward Arnold

Andrew Gibson ‘Introduction’, pp1-26 in Andrew Gibson (1990) Reading narrative

discourse: studies in the novel from Cervantes to Beckett London: Macmillan

David Lodge ‘Two Kinds of Modern Fiction’, p. 41-52 in David Lodge (1977) The modes
of modern writing: metaphor, metonymy and the typology of modern literature London:
Arnold

Herbert Marcuse ‘The Conquest of the Unhappy Consciousness’, Ch 3 (pp59-86) in

Marcuse (2002; first publ. 1964), One-Dimensional Man, London and New York:
Routledge
Alan Sinfield, ‘Class/Culture/Welfare’, Ch 4 (pp 39-59) in Sinfield (1997) Literature,
Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain London: Athlone Press

Background reading
Mikhail Bakhtin (transl. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist) (1981) The Dialogic
Imagination Austin: University of Texas Press (see especially 'Discourse in the Novel')

J. G. Becker (ed) (1963) Documents of Modern Literary Realism Princeton: Princeton

UP

Malcolm Bradbury (ed) (1990) (ed) The Novel Today London: Fontana (see especially
the pieces by Bradbury, by David Lodge and by Michel Butor)

Malcolm Bradbury (1993) The Modern British Novel London: Secker and Warburg

Peter Brooke (1992) Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative London:
Harvard UP

Steven Connor (1996) The English Novel in History, 1950-1995 London and New York:
Routledge

Elizabeth Ermarth (1983) Realism and Consensus in the English Novel Princeton:
Princeton UP

Andrzej Gąsiorek (1995) Post-war British Fiction: Realism and After London: Edward
Arnold

Andrew Gibson (1990) Reading narrative discourse: studies in the novel from Cervantes
to Beckett London: Macmillan
Zachary Leader (ed) (2002) On Modern British Fiction Oxford: OUP

David Lodge (1977) The modes of modern writing: metaphor, metonymy and the
typology of modern literature London: Arnold

Michael McKeon (2000) Theory of the Novel: A historical approach Baltimore and
London: Johns Hopkins UP

Robert Scholes, James Phelan and Robert Kellogg (eds) (2006) The Nature of Narrative
Oxford: Oxford UP

Alan Sinfield (2004, new ed.) Literature, politics and culture in postwar Britain London:
Continuum