Trauma and meaning in French concentration camp poetry (1943-1945) / Belle Marie Joseph.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Joseph, Belle Marie, author.

Series:

Contemporary French and francophone cultures

Contemporary French and Francophone cultures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French poetry--Jewish authors--20th century--History and criticism.

French poetry.

Nazi concentration camp inmates' writings.

French poetry--20th century--History and criticism.

Prisoners as authors.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2025.

Summary:

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open intiative.From 1942 to 1944, approximately 160,000 people were deported from France to concentration camps under the German occupation. Despite the horrific conditions, some political prisoners deported for Resistance activities, in addition to a small number of Jewish prisoners, managed to write poetry secretly in the camps between 1943 and 1945. Concentration camp poetry from over a hundred French prisoners survives to this day in archives, family collections, and published books. This book examines the poetry of eight French prisoners, as well as poems composed and shared within a group of friends in Ravensbrück. Through close readings, it explores prisoners' efforts to identify transcendent meaning in their traumatic circumstances. Using poetic and rhetorical techniques and drawing on the long tradition of French verse, these poets interrogated the horrors of the camps, attempted to reconcile their experience of trauma with their spiritual and political beliefs, and, in some cases, uncovered salvific meaning in their tribulations.This book offers a new perspective on French concentration camp literature, showing that in the camps themselves, some prisoners were already confronting their trauma in literature, employing the themes, narratives, and poetic techniques that would become so widespread in post-liberation testimonies. Poetry became a means not only to represent the atrocious events prisoners were experiencing but also, on occasion, to discover meaning and purpose within extreme suffering.

"From 1942 to 1944, approximately 160,000 people were deported from France to concentration camps under the German occupation. Despite the horrific conditions, some political prisoners deported for Resistance activities, in addition to a small number of Jewish prisoners, managed to write poetry secretly in the camps between 1943 and 1945. Concentration camp poetry from over a hundred French prisoners survives to this day in archives, family collections, and published books. This book examines the poetry of eight French prisoners, as well as poems composed and shared within a group of friends in Ravensbrück. Through close readings, it explores prisoners’ efforts to identify transcendent meaning in their traumatic circumstances. Using poetic and rhetorical techniques and drawing on the long tradition of French verse, these poets interrogated the horrors of the camps, attempted to reconcile their experience of trauma with their spiritual and political beliefs, and, in some cases, uncovered salvific meaning in their tribulations.This book offers a new perspective on French concentration camp literature, showing that in the camps themselves, some prisoners were already confronting their trauma in literature, employing the themes, narratives, and poetic techniques that would become so widespread in post-liberation testimonies. Poetry became a means not only to represent the atrocious events prisoners were experiencing but also, on occasion, to discover meaning and purpose within extreme suffering."-- From JSTOR.

Contents:

Suffering: violence, pathos, and agency

Humanity: finding compassion for the grotesque body

Home: nostalgia and the maintenance of identity in the camps

Love: imagining and dreaming of the beloved

Goodness and evil: thinking about morality, justice, and redemption in the camps

Ugliness and beauty: nature and aesthetic experience in concentration camp poetry

Death: materiality, atrocity, and transcendence

Time: bearing the long months of captivity.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (JSTOR, viewed on May 21, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version : Joseph, Belle Marie. Trauma and meaning in French concentration camp poetry (1943-1945).

ISBN:

9781836249207

1836249209

9781836249337

1836249330

OCLC:

1549645692

Publisher Number:

CIPO000326272

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license