AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 5, Number3.  August  2021                            Pp. 101-112
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol5no3.8

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Hailsham as an Intimate Space: A Bachelardian Reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me
Go 

Soumaya Bouacida
Department of Foreign Languages, University of 20^th August 1955, Skikda, Algeria
Corresponding Author: soumayabouacida@gmail.com

  Ikram Lecheheb
Department of Foreign Languages, University of 20^th August 1955, Skikda, Algeria

Itidel Boumali
                                                                                       Independent Scholar, Skikda, Algeria                                                                                   

Nada Khlifa
Independent Scholar, Skikda, Algeria

Received: 4/29/2021                           Accepted:  7/26/2021            Published: 8/25/2021

Abstract:
This paper aims to investigate the role played by Hailsham, the fictional boarding school in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, in the mind of its central characters as seen through Gaston Bachelard’s conception of space. The article then aims to explore how the memory of Hailsham works as a coping mechanism for some of the novel’s characters, especially for Kathy.  After a brief survey of Bachelard’s spatial criticism, the article then discusses the elements of intimacy in the space of Hailsham and portrays the boarding school as a oneiric house or a childhood home in Bachelard’s terms. By using an analytical method, this study offers an examination of two notions, that of memory and that of imagination, which are built upon the aspect of association and intimacy. Following the development of the plot of Never Let Me Go, the article sheds light on the role played by the so-called “cottages” in the shaping of these character’s relations to themselves, to each other, and to the outside world. This paper opens the door to other critics to read Never Let Me Go from the perspective of other spatial theorists like Mitchel Foucault, Henri Lefevbre, and Edward Soja.
Keywords: Bachelard, cloning, imagination, intimacy, Kazuo Ishiguro, memory, Never Let Me Go, and Space

Cite as:  Bouacida, S.,  Lecheheb, I.,  Boumali, I., &  Khlifa, N.(2021). Hailsham as an Intimate Space: A Bachelardian Reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 5 (3) 101-112.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol5no3.8

References

Bachelard, G. (1994). Poetics of Space(J. R. Stilgoe& M. Jolas, trans.). Boston:Beacon Press.

Cannella, M. E. (2017). Unreliable Physical Places and Memories As Posthuman Narration in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 3(2), 1 -29. Available at http://sanglap journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/61.

Gurnham, D. (2016). Memory, Imagination, Justice: Intersections of Law and Literature. London: Routledge.

Ishiguro, K. (2005). Never Let Me Go. London: Faber and Faber.

Leach, N. (1997). “Gaston Bachelard: Poetics of Space” in Neil Leach, ed., Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory(pp. 98-109 ).London: Routledge.

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Tally J. R. T. (2013). Spatiality. London: Routledge.