Representations of trauma by three women writers from the global south
- Authors: Pabel, Annemarie Luise
- Date: 2020-04
- Subjects: Women authors (South Africa) , Eastern Cape (South Africa) , South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Doctor's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/55128 , vital:49131
- Description: This study examines modalities of psychological trauma in selected works by three women writers from the global South: the Scottish-Sierra Leonean writer Aminatta Forna, the ChileanAmerican author Isabel Allende and Anuradha Roy from India. It aims to examine textual manifestations of complex and prolonged experiences of trauma and the ways in which literary forms facilitate such representations. Specifically, I am interested in multi-layered and interrelated forms of trauma which exceed the conventional, event-based conceptualization of trauma as an “overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophic events” (Caruth 1996:11). 1 Such experiences include war, exile, extensive childhood sexual abuse, maternal bereavement and familial disintegration. I have selected three texts from each author’s body of literary work: Forna’s memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water: a Daughter’s Quest (2003) and her novels The Memory of Love (2010) and Happiness (2010), Allende’s memoirs Paula (1994), My Invented Country (2004) and Portrait in Sepia (2000) and Roy’s novels An Atlas of Impossible Longing (2008), Sleeping on Jupiter (2015) and All the Lives We Never Lived (2018). The study’s focus on women writers from different contexts in the global South is motivated by an imbalance in critical attention and validation extreme forms of suffering receive globally. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Language, Media and Communication, 2020
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020-04
- Authors: Pabel, Annemarie Luise
- Date: 2020-04
- Subjects: Women authors (South Africa) , Eastern Cape (South Africa) , South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Doctor's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/55128 , vital:49131
- Description: This study examines modalities of psychological trauma in selected works by three women writers from the global South: the Scottish-Sierra Leonean writer Aminatta Forna, the ChileanAmerican author Isabel Allende and Anuradha Roy from India. It aims to examine textual manifestations of complex and prolonged experiences of trauma and the ways in which literary forms facilitate such representations. Specifically, I am interested in multi-layered and interrelated forms of trauma which exceed the conventional, event-based conceptualization of trauma as an “overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophic events” (Caruth 1996:11). 1 Such experiences include war, exile, extensive childhood sexual abuse, maternal bereavement and familial disintegration. I have selected three texts from each author’s body of literary work: Forna’s memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water: a Daughter’s Quest (2003) and her novels The Memory of Love (2010) and Happiness (2010), Allende’s memoirs Paula (1994), My Invented Country (2004) and Portrait in Sepia (2000) and Roy’s novels An Atlas of Impossible Longing (2008), Sleeping on Jupiter (2015) and All the Lives We Never Lived (2018). The study’s focus on women writers from different contexts in the global South is motivated by an imbalance in critical attention and validation extreme forms of suffering receive globally. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Language, Media and Communication, 2020
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020-04
Representing women's holocaust trauma across genres and eras
- Authors: Pabel, Annemarie Luise
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Jewish women in the Holocaust , Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) , Patriarchy in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/3245 , vital:20416
- Description: This dissertation situates itself within the problematic (mis)representation of women’s traumatic Holocaust experiences that are subjected to and underplayed by the patriarchal paradigm of Holocaust literature, in which male survivor-narratives constitute the norm. In using Holocaust texts from three different genres and periods, namely Anne Frank’s Diary of 1947, Ruth Klüger’s 2001 autobiography Still Alive: a Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, and Bernhard Schlink’s 1995 novel The Reader, this project approaches the role of genres in the re-articulation of traumatic experiences. It is the aim of this dissertation to explore the epistolary, autobiographic and fictional forms and their inherent conventions and to examine how they facilitate the articulation of women’s experiences that have long been underplayed and sanitized by rigid, patriarchal historical and literary discourses. In doing so, the project follows the structurally fragmenting impact of trauma on the mind and thus moves from short, fragmented forms, such as The Diary, to the more coherent autobiography, Still Alive, and eventually to the novel The Reader. In this analysis of the potential, conventions and complexities that each genre poses to the articulation of trauma, this project outlines and crosses boundaries of genre, gender, language and memory. In aiming at a comparative analysis of how different genres may facilitate the articulation of traumatic experiences differently, this project is based on the argument that the verbalization of trauma is essential for a person to regain control over their memories. This project is based on the different issues regarding the treatment of women, which arise in the selected texts. In selecting epistolary, autobiographic and fictional primary Holocaust texts, all of which address women’s trauma in various forms, I investigate the problematic and distorted representations of women’s experiences. These distortions of women’s traumatic experiences of the Holocaust undermine the validity of such experiences themselves. In order to show the extent of this misrepresentation across genres, I choose three very different primary texts. Firstly, a strong educational component has been ascribed to the diary of Anne Frank, which will be read as a subversive tool. Secondly, the autobiographic text chosen deals extensively with the issue of German/English translation and the representation of trauma that is affected by a bilingual condition. Thirdly, I select a postmodern novel that challenges conventional readings of Holocaust experiences through the use of very complex female characters. In approaching these issues, I will first identify such problematic distortions in the representations of women’s experiences in all three selected texts. I will then use the framework of literary theory as well as trauma and gender theorists to substantiate and evaluate my findings. In doing so, I seek to establish a comparative analysis of how the different forms allow women to re-articulate their traumatic experiences.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Pabel, Annemarie Luise
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Jewish women in the Holocaust , Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) , Patriarchy in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/3245 , vital:20416
- Description: This dissertation situates itself within the problematic (mis)representation of women’s traumatic Holocaust experiences that are subjected to and underplayed by the patriarchal paradigm of Holocaust literature, in which male survivor-narratives constitute the norm. In using Holocaust texts from three different genres and periods, namely Anne Frank’s Diary of 1947, Ruth Klüger’s 2001 autobiography Still Alive: a Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, and Bernhard Schlink’s 1995 novel The Reader, this project approaches the role of genres in the re-articulation of traumatic experiences. It is the aim of this dissertation to explore the epistolary, autobiographic and fictional forms and their inherent conventions and to examine how they facilitate the articulation of women’s experiences that have long been underplayed and sanitized by rigid, patriarchal historical and literary discourses. In doing so, the project follows the structurally fragmenting impact of trauma on the mind and thus moves from short, fragmented forms, such as The Diary, to the more coherent autobiography, Still Alive, and eventually to the novel The Reader. In this analysis of the potential, conventions and complexities that each genre poses to the articulation of trauma, this project outlines and crosses boundaries of genre, gender, language and memory. In aiming at a comparative analysis of how different genres may facilitate the articulation of traumatic experiences differently, this project is based on the argument that the verbalization of trauma is essential for a person to regain control over their memories. This project is based on the different issues regarding the treatment of women, which arise in the selected texts. In selecting epistolary, autobiographic and fictional primary Holocaust texts, all of which address women’s trauma in various forms, I investigate the problematic and distorted representations of women’s experiences. These distortions of women’s traumatic experiences of the Holocaust undermine the validity of such experiences themselves. In order to show the extent of this misrepresentation across genres, I choose three very different primary texts. Firstly, a strong educational component has been ascribed to the diary of Anne Frank, which will be read as a subversive tool. Secondly, the autobiographic text chosen deals extensively with the issue of German/English translation and the representation of trauma that is affected by a bilingual condition. Thirdly, I select a postmodern novel that challenges conventional readings of Holocaust experiences through the use of very complex female characters. In approaching these issues, I will first identify such problematic distortions in the representations of women’s experiences in all three selected texts. I will then use the framework of literary theory as well as trauma and gender theorists to substantiate and evaluate my findings. In doing so, I seek to establish a comparative analysis of how the different forms allow women to re-articulate their traumatic experiences.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
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