THE POETICS OF MEMORY AND FORGETTING IN THE FORMATION OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY TRAGIC DISCOURSE: A THEORETICAL-LITERARY ANALYSIS

Authors

  • Ibrayeva Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University Author
  • Mukanova Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University Author

Keywords:

memory motif, forgetting motif, tragic discourse, twentieth-century prose, comparative literature.

Abstract

The article examines the motifs of memory and forgetting as fundamental categories that shape the development of tragic discourse in twentieth-century literature. The analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of cultural memory and its structuring potential, as well as in selected theoretical insights of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Blanchot, and Pierre Nora, which illuminate the mechanisms of literary representation of the past. Memory is approached as a poetic principle that organizes narrative structure, establishes chronotopic coherence, and sustains the motif-based configuration of the text. Forgetting, conversely, is interpreted as an aesthetically conditioned strategy that produces narrative ruptures, semantic shifts, and zones of indeterminacy, thereby contributing to the emergence of the tragic dominant.

The practical section focuses on a comparative reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Abdizhamil Nurpeisov The Last Duty. These novels demonstrate distinct ways of engaging with a disappearing past: Ishiguro foregrounds fragmented, variable, and often unstable recollections, while Nurpeisov constructs a persistent network of motifs that preserves the coherence of a lost cultural and spatial world. In both texts, the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetting generates internal narrative tension and operates as a central mechanism in producing tragic meaning.

The study is exploratory in nature and systematizes major theoretical approaches to these motifs, offering a methodological framework for further investigations into the poetics of the tragic within twentieth-century prose.

The article examines the motifs of memory and forgetting as fundamental categories that shape the development of tragic discourse in twentieth-century literature. The analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of cultural memory and its structuring potential, as well as in selected theoretical insights of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Blanchot, and Pierre Nora, which illuminate the mechanisms of literary representation of the past. Memory is approached as a poetic principle that organizes narrative structure, establishes chronotopic coherence, and sustains the motif-based configuration of the text. Forgetting, conversely, is interpreted as an aesthetically conditioned strategy that produces narrative ruptures, semantic shifts, and zones of indeterminacy, thereby contributing to the emergence of the tragic dominant.

The practical section focuses on a comparative reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Abdizhamil Nurpeisov The Last Duty. These novels demonstrate distinct ways of engaging with a disappearing past: Ishiguro foregrounds fragmented, variable, and often unstable recollections, while Nurpeisov constructs a persistent network of motifs that preserves the coherence of a lost cultural and spatial world. In both texts, the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetting generates internal narrative tension and operates as a central mechanism in producing tragic meaning.

The study is exploratory in nature and systematizes major theoretical approaches to these motifs, offering a methodological framework for further investigations into the poetics of the tragic within twentieth-century prose.

The article examines the motifs of memory and forgetting as fundamental categories that shape the development of tragic discourse in twentieth-century literature. The analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of cultural memory and its structuring potential, as well as in selected theoretical insights of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Blanchot, and Pierre Nora, which illuminate the mechanisms of literary representation of the past. Memory is approached as a poetic principle that organizes narrative structure, establishes chronotopic coherence, and sustains the motif-based configuration of the text. Forgetting, conversely, is interpreted as an aesthetically conditioned strategy that produces narrative ruptures, semantic shifts, and zones of indeterminacy, thereby contributing to the emergence of the tragic dominant.

The practical section focuses on a comparative reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Abdizhamil Nurpeisov The Last Duty. These novels demonstrate distinct ways of engaging with a disappearing past: Ishiguro foregrounds fragmented, variable, and often unstable recollections, while Nurpeisov constructs a persistent network of motifs that preserves the coherence of a lost cultural and spatial world. In both texts, the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetting generates internal narrative tension and operates as a central mechanism in producing tragic meaning.

The study is exploratory in nature and systematizes major theoretical approaches to these motifs, offering a methodological framework for further investigations into the poetics of the tragic within twentieth-century prose.

The article examines the motifs of memory and forgetting as fundamental categories that shape the development of tragic discourse in twentieth-century literature. The analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of cultural memory and its structuring potential, as well as in selected theoretical insights of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Blanchot, and Pierre Nora, which illuminate the mechanisms of literary representation of the past. Memory is approached as a poetic principle that organizes narrative structure, establishes chronotopic coherence, and sustains the motif-based configuration of the text. Forgetting, conversely, is interpreted as an aesthetically conditioned strategy that produces narrative ruptures, semantic shifts, and zones of indeterminacy, thereby contributing to the emergence of the tragic dominant.

The practical section focuses on a comparative reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Abdizhamil Nurpeisov The Last Duty. These novels demonstrate distinct ways of engaging with a disappearing past: Ishiguro foregrounds fragmented, variable, and often unstable recollections, while Nurpeisov constructs a persistent network of motifs that preserves the coherence of a lost cultural and spatial world. In both texts, the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetting generates internal narrative tension and operates as a central mechanism in producing tragic meaning.

The study is exploratory in nature and systematizes major theoretical approaches to these motifs, offering a methodological framework for further investigations into the poetics of the tragic within twentieth-century prose.

The article examines the motifs of memory and forgetting as fundamental categories that shape the development of tragic discourse in twentieth-century literature. The analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of cultural memory and its structuring potential, as well as in selected theoretical insights of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Blanchot, and Pierre Nora, which illuminate the mechanisms of literary representation of the past. Memory is approached as a poetic principle that organizes narrative structure, establishes chronotopic coherence, and sustains the motif-based configuration of the text. Forgetting, conversely, is interpreted as an aesthetically conditioned strategy that produces narrative ruptures, semantic shifts, and zones of indeterminacy, thereby contributing to the emergence of the tragic dominant.

The practical section focuses on a comparative reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Abdizhamil Nurpeisov The Last Duty. These novels demonstrate distinct ways of engaging with a disappearing past: Ishiguro foregrounds fragmented, variable, and often unstable recollections, while Nurpeisov constructs a persistent network of motifs that preserves the coherence of a lost cultural and spatial world. In both texts, the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetting generates internal narrative tension and operates as a central mechanism in producing tragic meaning.

The study is exploratory in nature and systematizes major theoretical approaches to these motifs, offering a methodological framework for further investigations into the poetics of the tragic within twentieth-century prose.

The article examines the motifs of memory and forgetting as fundamental categories that shape the development of tragic discourse in twentieth-century literature. The analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of cultural memory and its structuring potential, as well as in selected theoretical insights of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Blanchot, and Pierre Nora, which illuminate the mechanisms of literary representation of the past. Memory is approached as a poetic principle that organizes narrative structure, establishes chronotopic coherence, and sustains the motif-based configuration of the text. Forgetting, conversely, is interpreted as an aesthetically conditioned strategy that produces narrative ruptures, semantic shifts, and zones of indeterminacy, thereby contributing to the emergence of the tragic dominant.

The practical section focuses on a comparative reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Abdizhamil Nurpeisov The Last Duty. These novels demonstrate distinct ways of engaging with a disappearing past: Ishiguro foregrounds fragmented, variable, and often unstable recollections, while Nurpeisov constructs a persistent network of motifs that preserves the coherence of a lost cultural and spatial world. In both texts, the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetting generates internal narrative tension and operates as a central mechanism in producing tragic meaning.

The study is exploratory in nature and systematizes major theoretical approaches to these motifs, offering a methodological framework for further investigations into the poetics of the tragic within twentieth-century prose.

The article examines the motifs of memory and forgetting as fundamental categories that shape the development of tragic discourse in twentieth-century literature. The analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of cultural memory and its structuring potential, as well as in selected theoretical insights of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Blanchot, and Pierre Nora, which illuminate the mechanisms of literary representation of the past. Memory is approached as a poetic principle that organizes narrative structure, establishes chronotopic coherence, and sustains the motif-based configuration of the text. Forgetting, conversely, is interpreted as an aesthetically conditioned strategy that produces narrative ruptures, semantic shifts, and zones of indeterminacy, thereby contributing to the emergence of the tragic dominant.

The practical section focuses on a comparative reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Abdizhamil Nurpeisov The Last Duty. These novels demonstrate distinct ways of engaging with a disappearing past: Ishiguro foregrounds fragmented, variable, and often unstable recollections, while Nurpeisov constructs a persistent network of motifs that preserves the coherence of a lost cultural and spatial world. In both texts, the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetting generates internal narrative tension and operates as a central mechanism in producing tragic meaning.

The study is exploratory in nature and systematizes major theoretical approaches to these motifs, offering a methodological framework for further investigations into the poetics of the tragic within twentieth-century prose.

The article examines the motifs of memory and forgetting as fundamental categories that shape the development of tragic discourse in twentieth-century literature. The analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of cultural memory and its structuring potential, as well as in selected theoretical insights of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Blanchot, and Pierre Nora, which illuminate the mechanisms of literary representation of the past. Memory is approached as a poetic principle that organizes narrative structure, establishes chronotopic coherence, and sustains the motif-based configuration of the text. Forgetting, conversely, is interpreted as an aesthetically conditioned strategy that produces narrative ruptures, semantic shifts, and zones of indeterminacy, thereby contributing to the emergence of the tragic dominant.

The practical section focuses on a comparative reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Abdizhamil Nurpeisov The Last Duty. These novels demonstrate distinct ways of engaging with a disappearing past: Ishiguro foregrounds fragmented, variable, and often unstable recollections, while Nurpeisov constructs a persistent network of motifs that preserves the coherence of a lost cultural and spatial world. In both texts, the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetting generates internal narrative tension and operates as a central mechanism in producing tragic meaning.

The study is exploratory in nature and systematizes major theoretical approaches to these motifs, offering a methodological framework for further investigations into the poetics of the tragic within twentieth-century prose.

The article examines the motifs of memory and forgetting as fundamental categories that shape the development of tragic discourse in twentieth-century literature. The analysis is grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of cultural memory and its structuring potential, as well as in selected theoretical insights of Paul Ricœur, Maurice Blanchot, and Pierre Nora, which illuminate the mechanisms of literary representation of the past. Memory is approached as a poetic principle that organizes narrative structure, establishes chronotopic coherence, and sustains the motif-based configuration of the text. Forgetting, conversely, is interpreted as an aesthetically conditioned strategy that produces narrative ruptures, semantic shifts, and zones of indeterminacy, thereby contributing to the emergence of the tragic dominant.

The practical section focuses on a comparative reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Abdizhamil Nurpeisov The Last Duty. These novels demonstrate distinct ways of engaging with a disappearing past: Ishiguro foregrounds fragmented, variable, and often unstable recollections, while Nurpeisov constructs a persistent network of motifs that preserves the coherence of a lost cultural and spatial world. In both texts, the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetting generates internal narrative tension and operates as a central mechanism in producing tragic meaning.

The study is exploratory in nature and systematizes major theoretical approaches to these motifs, offering a methodological framework for further investigations into the poetics of the tragic within twentieth-century prose.

Author Biographies

  • Ibrayeva, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

    Ibrayeva Zhanarka Bakibaevna - Candidate of Philology Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language and Literature, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail: igb1006@mail.ru, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1487-5513

  • Mukanova, Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University

     

    Zhazira Rsbaykyzy Mukanova - doctoral student of Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail:zhazira82MR@gmail.com, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3140-0258

    Zhazira Rsbaykyzy Mukanova - doctoral student of Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail:zhazira82MR@gmail.com, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3140-0258

    Zhazira Rsbaykyzy Mukanova - doctoral student of Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail:zhazira82MR@gmail.com, Orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3140-0258

     

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Published

2025-12-27

How to Cite

THE POETICS OF MEMORY AND FORGETTING IN THE FORMATION OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY TRAGIC DISCOURSE: A THEORETICAL-LITERARY ANALYSIS. (2025). BULLETIN OF SHAKARIM UNIVERSITY. PHILOLOGY SERIES , 4(4), 144-153. https://philological.vestnik.shakarim.kz/index.php/my/article/view/136

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