earticle

영어

This paper demonstrates that Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan, two representative English novelists who belong to the postwar generation, engage in the literary tradition of the country-house novel critically through both using it and distancing themselves from it. Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and McEwan’s Atonement examine the entity of the English country house, which has been one of the most important subjects of English literature, and disclose their historical context. In The Remains of the Day, Mr. Stevens’ recollections reveal the hierarchical order of Darlington Hall and its involvement in Nazism, which results in the demythification of the ‘Englishness’ the country house represents. In Atonement, Briony’s repeated writings on Robbie and Cecilia can be interpreted as atonement for the historical and literary fallacy which has eliminated the history of common people from center stage. This paper affirms that Ishiguro and McEwan, being conscious of the English country house as a key symbol of Englishness and the most popular icon of the 1980s’ nostalgia industry of English society, participate actively in the ground of cultural politics of English society by appropriating the literary tradition of country-house novel subversively in their works.