Transgressive Spatialities and Solastalgia in Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World.

There is a connection between human beings and their physical environment. Any disruption to this connection as a result of changes in the environment affects the individual. Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World focuses on the underlying melancholic feeling of an individual in relation to the changes in the external environment or, in other words, solastalgia. Through the characterization of an old painter named Masuji Ono, the novel makes the readers contemplate on the significance of the connection between human beings and the external physical world. This paper, using the idea of solastalgia by Glenn Albrecht, scrutinizes the different kinds of spatialities in Ishiguro's work. Simultaneously, it also delineates the inherent pain in the mind of the central character, Ono, by mapping the connections between him and the external landscape, uncovering in the process, the numerous spaces seen in the narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]