This seminar will look at Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Buried Giant (2015) through an Eco-Emotional approach, combining insights from ecocriticism and cognitive-affective approaches to the study of literature. The text is a fantastical tale set in fourteenth-century England and loosely inspired by the medieval tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The main story arc features a quest to find a dragon whose breath fills the region with a magical mist that causes people to forget their past, both recent and ancient. While memory is arguably the core theme, the environment also plays a central role in the story. Descriptions of nature occupy a significant proportion of the text, giving the land, plants, animals, as well as supernatural creatures such as dragons, ogres, and pixies a prominent role in the narrative structure, on par with human characters. Landscape itself is an important plot driver, as the characters’ recollections of personal and historical past are rekindled by the places they traverse. Like the buried giant of the title, memories are embedded in the landscape, and trigger emotional responses which in turn revive past experiences, offering a compelling example of literature’s ability to represent and describe affective responses to the environment.
The seminar is open to all, welcome!
Contact research assistant Sara Louise G. West for the readings that will be discussed in the seminar.