Overview
- Discusses a wide variety of concepts and themes within the fields of Trauma theory and Memory Studies including individual and collective trauma, historical trauma, and cultural memory
- Offers a transnational perspective through its discussion of texts from countries such as the United States, France, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and the UK
- Brings together the often separated discussions of literary aesthetics, politics, and trauma
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict (PSCHC)
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About this book
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.
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Keywords
Table of contents (13 chapters)
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The Ideological and Aesthetic (Re)construction of Cultural Memory in Early Twentieth-Century Literature
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Ethical and Aesthetic Challenges in the Representation, Transmission and Teaching of the Holocaust
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Romance Strategies and Spectrality in the Fictional Representation of Traumatic Memories
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Dislocated Lives and Narratives: Hybridity, Liminality and the Testimonial Representation of Traumatic Memories in a Postcolonial Context
Reviews
“Bringing together current scholarly debates on trauma, memory, and affect, this volume makes an original contribution to research on twentieth-century and contemporary literature. It forcefully demonstrates how productively the arts contribute to major cultural challenges, ranging from the Holocaust to the legacy of the colonial system. Individual essays address traumatic memories in various European countries and beyond, revealing the richness of formal strategies employed by writers to evoke and abate the personal and collective spectres as they relate to cultural memory.” (Gerd Bayer, Professor of English Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Erlangen-Nüremberg)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Susana Onega is Professor of English Literature at the University of Zaragoza. She has written on the work of contemporary writers, narrative theory, and ethics and trauma; and is the author of five monographs, including Form and Meaning in the Novels of John Fowles (1989, Winner of the Enrique García Díez Research Award), Metafiction and Myth in the Novels of Peter Ackroyd (1999), and Jeanette Winterson (2006, Shortlisted for the European Society for the Study of English Book Award, 2008).
Constanza del Río is Senior Lecturer in British and Irish Literature at the University of Zaragoza. Her research centers on contemporary Irish fiction, narrative and critical theory, and popular narrative genres. She is co-editor of Memory, Imagination and Desire in Contemporary Anglo-American Literature and Film (2004).
Maite Escudero-Alías is Senior Lecturer at the University of Zaragoza, where she teaches English Literature. Her main research interests centre on contemporary literary criticism, feminism, queer and affect theory in literature, and culture. She is the author of Long Live the King: A Genealogy of Performative Genders (2009) and has published in the Journal of Gender Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of Lesbian Studies, The Journal of Transatlantic Studies, and Journal of International Women’s Studies, among others.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Traumatic Memory and the Ethical, Political and Transhistorical Functions of Literature
Editors: Susana Onega, Constanza del Río, Maite Escudero-Alías
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55278-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-55277-4Published: 19 December 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-85615-5Published: 23 May 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-55278-1Published: 01 December 2017
Series ISSN: 2634-6419
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6427
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 331
Topics: Comparative Literature, Literary Theory, Twentieth-Century Literature, European Literature, Postcolonial/World Literature, Memory Studies