Encrypting the past : the German-Jewish Holocaust novel of the first generation / Kirstin Gwyer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gwyer, Kirstin, 1979- author.

Series:

Oxford modern languages and literature monographs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

German fiction--Jewish authors--History and criticism.

German fiction.

German fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) in literature.

Jewish authors.

Physical Description:

x, 244 pages ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

Encrypting the Past puts forward the category of the first-generation German-Jewish Holocaust novel and examines its representational strategies. With reference to works by H. G. Adler, fenny Aloni, Elisabeth Augustin, Erich Fried, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, and a concluding section on W. G. Sebald, it shows how Holocaust literature was being written decades before post-war authors such as Sebald were credited with having found new ways of reflecting the unspeakable. It demonstrates that, before the theoretical debate over the fundamental representability of the Holocaust was even fully under way, first-generation authors were already translating unnarratable trauma into a literary strategy of unnarrating: a strategy of encrypting the Holocaust into the form and structure of their texts. The implications of treating these writers as a set, and their body of work as a hitherto unacknowledged category of Holocaust fiction, go well beyond drawing attention to a number of important but critically neglected authors, This study frames the analysis of first-generation narrative strategies in the broader debate on the ethics and aesthetics of Holocaust writing. In revealing how certain kinds of testimony have been privileged above others in international Holocaust studies, it raises questions of a more general nature concerning canon formation and our theoretical responses to the Holocaust In considering foremost among these responses the theory of deconstruction and trauma theory, it finally invites a re-examination of the relationship between the postmodern and trauma. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 An Absence in Context: Holocaust Representation in Testimony, Scholarship, and Literature 11

Speaking the Unspeakable: Holocaust Survivor Testimony 12

Speaking of Speaking the Unspeakable; The Study of Holocausr Representation 14

Imagining the Unspeakable: Holocaust Fiction 20

The Past as Trace: Postmodernism 30

The Past as Symptom: Trauma Theory 36

The Past as Legacy: 'post-memory' 45

'A real fictitious discourse': The Holocaust Novel in the First Generation 50

2 Writing of Broken Time(s): H. G. Adler, Eine Reise, Die unsichtbare Wand 57

A Twofold Testimonial Project 60

The Return of Apeiron 69

Dis(ad)vantaging the Reader 79

Terra Incognita 87

3 The Unhoused Past: Elisabeth Augustin, Auswege; Jenny Aloni, Der Wartesaal 90

The Uncanny Legacy 93

Losing the Plot: Elisabeth Augustin's Auswege 98

Textual Labyrinths: Jenny Alont's Der Wartesaal 117

4 The Past Encrypted: Erich Fried, Bin Soldat und ein Mädchen 136

'To omit a word always..." 137

'...to resort to obvious periphrases...' 147

'That is the tortuous method preferred...' 153

'...in each of the meanderings...' 161

'...of his indefatigable novel...' 166

5 Design from Debris: Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Tytiset, Masante 182

'Jenes große erinnerungspoetologische Projekt'? 188

'Der Schrecken [ist] eigentlich das Hauptthema' 191

'Speculations on ways to tell that story' 195

6 Conclusion: What Comes 'After': The 'Postmemory' Holocaust Novel 205.

ISBN:

9780198709930

0198709935

OCLC:

892706669