An Artist of the Floating World

An Artist of the Floating World (1986)is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It is set in post-World War II Japan and is narrated by Masuji Ono, an ageing painter, who looks back on his life and how he has lived it. He notices how his once great reputation has faltered since the war and how attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. The chief conflict deals with Ono's need to accept responsibility for his past actions and in the expostulation to find a path to peace in his good will for the young white collar workers on the streets at lunchbreak. The novel also deals with the role of people in a rapidly changing environment.

 

Title

The novel's title is based on the literal translation of Ukiyo-e, a word referring to the Japanese art of prints. Therefore, it can be read as "a printmaker" or "an artist living in a changing world," given both Ono's limited understanding and the dramatic changes his world, Japan in the first half of the twentieth century, has undergone in his lifetime.

The title also refers to an artistic genre. Ono's master was especially interested in depicting scenes from the pleasure district adjacent to the villa in which he and his students lived. Ono mentions the ephemeral nature of the floating world that could be experienced during each night. His master experimented with innovative softer Western-style painting techniques. Ono became estranged from him and forged his own career. He could not help but feel gleeful when his master's paintings fell into disfavour during a return to the use of more traditional bold lines in the paintings used for nationalistic posters.

 

Reading materials .

1) Sculpting Historiography as a Narrative in An Artist of the Floating World

2) Looking at the changing world through a displaced and estranged artist.

3) Political Representation

4) Memory ethics and the unreliable narrator

5) No Homelike Place: The Lesson of History in " An Artist of the Floating World "

6) Construction of the past 

Answer the question below given.

1) Sculpting Historiography as a Narrative technique in " An Artist of the Floating World ". Give your point of view on this narrative technique.

2) The effect of the new culture on characters in the novel. Have you not is this kind of changes  how and where you not explain in detail .

3) How you see the political Representation in this novel ? Or there is nothing politically active in this novel ? Give your point of view and argument also.

4)  Give appropriate argument  on " Memory , ethics, and the first person unreliable narrator"  with special reference on "  An Artist of the Floating World " .

5)  Explain in detail Features of the Narrator's Account and also explain Ono's attitude to his past explain in detail.

Work Citation

1) Das, S. (n.d.). Sculpting Historiography as a Narrative in An Artist of the Floating World. Retrieved July 30, 2020, from https://www.academia.edu/42903167/Sculpting_Historiography_as_a_Narrative_in_An_Artist_of_the_Floating_World

2) Turgut, Z. (n.d.). Looking at the changing world through a displaced and estranged artist: Kazuo Ishiguro's, 'an artist of the floating world'. Retrieved July 30, 2020, from https://www.academia.edu/41775948/Looking_at_the_changing_world_through_a_displaced_and_estranged_artist_Kazuo_Ishiguros_an_artist_of_the_floating_world

3)  Das, S. (n.d.). Political Representation in Ishiguro's an Artist of the Floating World and the Remains of the Day. Retrieved July 30,2020,from https://www.academia.edu/37563977/Political_Representation_in_Ishiguros_an_Artist_of_the_Floating_World_and_the_Remains_of_the_Day

4) Waight, N. (n.d.). Memory, ethics and the unreliable narrator in An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. Retrieved July 30, 2020, from https://www.academia.edu/37116333/Memory_ethics_and_the_unreliable_narrator_in_An_Artist_of_the_Floating_World_The_Remains_of_the_Day_and_Never_Let_Me_Go

5) An Artist of the Floating World. (2020, July 27). Retrieved July 30, 2020, from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Artist_of_the_Floating_World