Traumatic Memory and the Ethical, Political and Transhistorical Functions of Literature

Traumatic Memory and the Ethical, Political and Transhistorical Functions of Literature edited by Susana Onega, Constanza del Río, Maite Escudero-Alías. - 1st ed. 2017. - New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. - XIV, 331 pages. - Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, 2634-6419 . - Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, .

Introduction -- History Become Memory: The Dante Sexcentenary and World War I in the German Press -- On Poetic Violence: W. B. Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" and César Vallejo's "Vusco volvvver de golpe el golpe." -- Holocaust Trauma between the National and the Transnational: Reflections on History's "Broken Mirror." -- Wandering Memory, Wandering Jews: Generic Hybridity and the Construction of Jewish Memory in Linda Grant's works -- -- Self-representation and the Impossibility of (Re) membering in Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother -- Trauma, Screen Memories, Safe Spaces, and Productive Melancholia in Toni Morrison's Home -- Conclusion.

This volume addresses the construction and artistic representation of traumatic memories in the contemporary Western world from a variety of inter- and trans-disciplinarity critical approaches and perspectives, ranging from the cultural, political, historical, and ideological to the ethical and aesthetic, and distinguishing between individual, collective, and cultural traumas. The chapters introduce complementary concepts from diverse thinkers including Cathy Caruth, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Homi Bhabha, Abraham and Torok, and Joyce Carol Oates; they also draw from fields of study such as Memory Studies, Theory of Affects, Narrative and Genre Theory, and Cultural Studies. Traumatic Memory and the Political, Economic, and Transhistorical Functions of Literature addresses trauma as a culturally embedded phenomenon and deconstructs the idea of trauma as universal, transhistorical, and abstract.

9783319552774 (Hbk)

10.1007/978-3-319-55278-1 doi

2019765445


Comparative literature.
European literature.
Historiography.
Literature .
Literature--Philosophy.
Literature, Modern--20th century.
Comparative Literature.
European Literature.
Literary Theory.
Memory Studies.
Postcolonial/World Literature.
Twentieth-Century Literature.

809.933 On2T



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