NARRATIVE AND MEDICINE 2012

“Poetics of trauma: modes of narration in contemporary fiction.”

Abstract: Traumatic experiences are often considered to be unrepresentable; they may, however, be transformed into narratives, both in a therapeutic situation and in literary texts. The literary representation of individual trauma may be significant as a fictional example of a historical collective experience and as a contribution to the shaping of cultural memory.

This paper will study some literary texts related to traumatic events of contemporary history (the Holocaust and 9/11) in order to identify the specific character of their narrative language and the historical, cultural and ethical dimensions of these fictions.