Autobiographical framing of fiction in Kazuo Ishiguro's the remains of the day and Never Let Me Go

This thesis explores the fictional autobiographical frames in two novels by Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. Both of these novels are framed as autobiographical accounts of their narrators; the first is a diary and the second is a memoir. While trying to understand how this quality informs character development in these novels, I trace how the narrative is situated within the referentiality-fictionality spectrum, as suggested by the critical discourse on autobiographical writing. As this variation between the "referential" and "fictional" in relation to the fictional universes of the novels is shaped around both the type of the autobiographical text and the plots of the novels, my analyses include criticism regarding the plot elements, the style of narration, and the form through which they are presented. I find that while in the Remains of the Day, Stevens's autobiographical endeavour opens him up to formerly unexplored affective possibilities and lead him to fictionalize a future, in Never Let Me Go, Kathy's narrative becomes more referential to her reality as explored in the novel, when compared to fictions she grew up creating with her group of friends.