Musical allusions in Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes as an intermedial component

This article examines the collection of short fiction Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall (2009) by Kazuo Ishiguro, proposing a framework to explore the extent to which iconic principles manifest within literary texts. Employing critical tools such as narratology and intermediality studies, the analysis reveals leitmotif clusters, structural patterns, and musical allusions within the text’s poetics. The findings suggest that the novella collection represents a concentrated expression of the interplay between music and literature, where music contributes to setting creation, character portrayal, and plot development. The study also concludes on the efficacy of musical forms when transposed into another semiotic system.