Allegorical Journey: Sociocultural Study of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant and Jose Saramago’s Blindness

The relationship between memory and literature has appeared as an interdisciplinary field that investigates: Psychology, Sociology, history, and culture as a unique discipline. The concepts of cultural memory and personal identity play a significant role in postmodern literature. In the present world, memory attends as a code to our multiple modes of being and shapes who we are as part of a historical sense of belonging. Kazuo Ishiguro and Jose Saramago are prominent novelists who create spaces and characters that can shape cultural memory function. This study selected The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro and Blindness by Jose Saramago to shed light on how memory and identity are interrelated. The aim of this article is followed in two various steps: first, discussing the roles of different symbols and concepts such as peace and love through the whole work to reflect the social and historical frameworks of memory; and second, the notion of cultural memory that is borrowed from the theories of Aleida Assmann to reflect how the quest for identity and history echoes the mythlike atmosphere of the novels. As a result, the performative function of memory contributes to constructing cultural and individual identity as well as interpretive historical and social milieu in the selected novels.

Keywords:

Memory , Cultural memory , History , Culture , Postmodern Literature