『남아있는 나날』에서 ‘대영제국의 죽음’ 형상화

Abstract

Jong-Seong ParkThis paper aims to explore how Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese-English writer, configures the theme of the dissolution of the British Empire in The Remains of the Day (1989) by adopting postcolonial reading strategies. I draw attention to some key historical events such as The Boer War (1899-1901), The Treaty of Versailles (1919), The Suez Canal Crisis (1956), the rise of new American Empire (after The Second World War), and discuss their implications in the context of the decline of the British Empire. The historicity of this novel is something that cannot be easily belittled.One of my contentions is that Ishiguro questions and challenges such collective and dehumanizing ideologies as imperialism, jingoism, racism, elitism, and capitalism all point to essentialist discourses. Having noticed the dramatic collapse of the Japanese Empire through atomic bomb droppings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Ishiguro's birthplace), Ishiguro is equipped with a special ability to investigate what caused the decline of the British Empire. In conclusion, I argue that Ishiguro is not a writer-in-limbo, but a perceptive outsider who can not only totalize the malaise of the British society, but also transcend it. The Remains of the Day sets a good example for proving this point. He sees the danger in the British attachments to sentimental nostalgia, naive idealism, and ethnocentrism. He dismantles the myth of the British Empire and, therefore, makes The Remains of the Day as a kind of postcolonial text.