HENKF2002U CANCELLED: English - Free topic 2: (Ad)dressing the Wound: trauma stories in narrative and theory and Frame and Frame-Break in American Literature

CANCELLED

(Ad)dressing the Wound: trauma stories in narrative and theory (Anne Sophie Taagaard)

In this course, we will discuss a selection of contemporary novels that re-explores histories of hurt and pain from the therapeutic approach offered by trauma studies. As is well-known from trauma theory, trauma is an ‘unclaimed experience’ (cf. Cathy Caruth, 1996) and traumatic memory cannot readily be translated into narrative memory. The voicing or representation of trauma is always in conflict with the simultaneous urge in the traumatised individual to both forget and remember. The ‘telling’ of traumatic experience annihilates order and continuity in representation and destabilises referential meaning as the traumatic impact has blocked full access to language. We will look at how contemporary novels engage with and process traumatic experiences in the attempt to ‘represent the un-representable’ through an experimentation with genre and narrative technique.

Frame and Frame-Break in American Literature (Inge Birgitte Siegumfeldt)

How do narrative frames determine a text? What happens when established frames are broken or doubled or called into question?

In this course, we will focus specifically on the nature and function of narrative frames in contemporary American fiction and discuss the ways in which a selection of writers use overt and covert frames to flaunt heterogeneity, instability and unreliability in prose, poetry, drama and essay writing. We will discuss relevant theories by Waugh, McHale, Clare, James and Seshagiri, among others, and apply it to such literary texts as Ronald Sukenick’s The Death of the Novel, 1969, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, 1987, Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love, 2005. Morrison’s Beloved bridges the two sections of this module. It will be studied from the different perspectives determined by the theoretical angles of the two courses.