Volume 4,Issue 5
A Study of Trauma Writing in The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro, as an important immigrant writer in contemporary British literature and the laureate of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, has drawn extensive academic attention since the publication of The Buried Giant. Set in England after the era of King Arthur, the novel profoundly explores the relationship between memory, trauma, and historical writing through the fantastical device of “the mist of forgetting”. However, currently domestic and international scholarship on trauma writing in The Buried Giant remains relatively weak. Most studies focus on individual trauma and are largely limited to classical trauma theories, such as those of Freud and Herman.
This study makes its contribution in two respects: First, it innovatively introduces postcolonial trauma theory, broadening the research horizon on The Buried Giant and providing a new theoretical entry point for the study of Ishiguro’s trauma writing. Second, it systematically analyzes the trauma presentation in the novel from three dimensions—individual trauma, collective trauma, and postcolonial trauma. This study contributes to scholarship on trauma narratives by enriching academic research on trauma narratives in Ishiguro’s works, while also providing literary references for understanding issues of ethnic and national conflict and historical memory in contemporary society.
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