The Status of Metaphor in (De)Constructing Historical Master-Narratives in the Novels of Julian Barnes and Graham Swift and Kazuo Ishiguro

The following thesis consists in an attempt at synthesising several problems connected with narrating historical representations by means of metaphors. It examines the functions metaphorical narratives may attend in order to (de)construct historical identities as well as the places metaphors may occupy in the order of discourses. Divided into three chapters, the dissertation deals with the ‘spectacular’ and the ‘performative’ potential of figurative speech assembled in historical narrations that are, in quite distinct fashions, presented in selected novels by Julian Barnes, Graham Swift and Kazuo Ishiguro. The methodological profile of the analysis conducted in this thesis is centralised on the deconstructionist notion of metaphor as well as certain poststructuralist conceptions of power relations. But despite the fact that most theoretical inspirations are drawn from the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault there appear also other names and theoretical sources. Among these quite a substantial role can be assigned to literary criticism developed between 1950s and 1990s in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe, feminist critique along with its various orientations, psychoanalytic writings by Erich Fromm, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, as well as texts authored by philosophers and critics linked more to structuralist tradition and New Criticism rather than deconstruction such as Paul Ricoeur, Roland Barthes, Mikhail Bakhtin, Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish or Walter Benjamin. The first chapter, Metaphoricised Historiography, as its title implies, serves as a short introduction to the intricacies of post-war British history and its impact on literature. Moreover, the chapter investigates the possible manoeuvres of both individual and collective identifications with respect to the sum of semantic aspects of reality inherited from history. Finally, it tries to confirm the creditability a metaphor can be granted thanks to such an analysis. The next chapter entitled History as Spectacle deals with recontextualising and manipulating historical scenes. It describes protagonists whose actions are focused on a sort of metaphorical redistribution of historical roles in the sphere of especially Judeo-Christian tradition. The aspiration to interact with the hybrid rhetoric of place and to undermine the autonomy of the canonical, as a consequence, leads to the conviction of the end of all historical processes. And the last chapter, History as Performance, addresses a certain type of historical sensitivity; it differs from spectacle in the degree of private efforts of the protagonists put into the search of historical truths and an intensified personal feeling of repression from history. The protagonists situate the focal point of their attention on the process of interpretation and interpretative tools that may be employed in order to come up with the most truthful and reliable version of the past. It is discussed on the examples of visual arts and the situation of historical painting in the context of being objectified in endless interpretative circulation in galleries and museums. Finally, performative actions are most vividly exhibited by the schizophrenic discourses describing an alternative reality fabricated with the intention to protest against cultural hegemony. On the whole, the dissertation tries to estimate the significance of metaphors in discourses narrating historical identities.