Volume 1: Memory

To view ‘Volume I: Memory’ online, please click here.

Veronica Frigeni

Bio:

Veronica is a PhD student and graduate teaching assistant in the Italian Studies Department at SECL. Before joining the University of Kent (September 2013), Veronica graduated cum laude in Literature at the University of Milan and in Management of Social, Political and Institutional Communication at IULM University, during which she held an internship at the Italian Institute of Culture in Toronto. She has also studied in a one year MA by research in Criticism, Literature, and Theory at Kingston University.

Veronica’s research project focuses on the oeuvre and critical legacy of the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi, investigating the possibility of a theoretical framing of his works within a poetics of the Uncanny.

Abstract:

‘Ethics and Aesthetics of Memory in Tabucchi’s short story Notte, mare o distanza’

Memory constitutes the skeleton of the short story Notte, mare o distanza,1 in which, in a sort of slow motion, the narrator returns several times to a night of violence in the Salazar’s Portugal, always interrupting the flow of his remembrance when the proximity to the trauma becomes unbearable. Taking the lead from a close reading of Tabucchi’s short story, the aim of the paper is to investigate in what way and to what degrees it delineates both an ethics and aesthetics of memory.

On the one hand, I will observe how Tabucchi’s employs the Freudian uncanny, and, specifically, the concept of déjà vu, in order to deal with a reality uncannily traumatic in itself. The ethical value of such approach lies in the fact that, for Tabucchi, memory allows for the narration of what might have taken place, of those potentialities of meaning that were not lived out in the past. Availing myself of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of historical time, I will argue that memory and imagination become the narrative tools the writer can use in order to retrieve and fulfil unsolved potentialities of the past. On the other hand, I will posit the necessity to consider memory as the fundamental kernel of Tabucchi’s overall poetics. In this sense it will be explained why Tabucchi regards, as the only legitimate poetics, what he calls poetica a posteriori, ‘la previsione del passato che si realizza postumamente’, a sort of future ghostly premonition of the past.

Rocío García-Romero

Bio:

Rocío García-Romero is currently completing an MA in Comparative Literature and Hispanic Studies at the University of Kent. She is a translator of English and German, and has taught Spanish at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg, at the University of Trier in Germany, and currently teaches at the University of Kent.

Abstract:

‘Modern and Contemporary Visions of a Female Heroine: Judith in Twentieth-century Poetry’

The apocryphal Book of Judith, composed in the second century AD, has enjoyed notable popularity since late antiquity and has been treated over the centuries in a variety of literary forms. The dramatic scene narrated in the book, with the decapitation of general Holofernes by Judith’s hand, constitutes a récit fort in the terms of Roland Barthes, and is reviewed by each generation of writers in the light of its own concerns (Ziolkiowski, 2009). Notable poets such as Dante Alighieri and Lope de Vega portrayed the myth in their work, reflecting the medieval views of Judith as an example of chastity and heroism. It was in the nineteenth century when Freud and Sacher-Masoch, among others, exposed their own view of Judith as a femme fatale in the midst of the ‘battle between the sexes’. This focus on the psychology of the individual woman liberated the figure for a variety of interpretations (Schettler, 2004), which poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Gertrud Kolmar reflected in their work through personal paraphrases and fictionalizations. However, more contemporary visions of the myth by Andrew Hudgins, Patti Smith and Vicky Feaver suggest that the battle between the sexes is finally over. The new representations of the literary figure, via new creations and post-figurations, reflect the poets’ own personal views on topics such as male/female equality, homosexuality and trauma. In this article I will focus especially on the myth of Judith in poetry, in an attempt to show the shift from historical fictionalizations focusing on the psychology of Judith as a femme fatale, to new creations during the late twentieth-century which take a variety of themes far from that image.

Hannah Huxley

 Bio

Hannah is currently studying for an MA in English & American Literature at the University of Kent and will be starting a PhD in American Studies in September. Her main research interests include African-American fiction, folklore, and sound aesthetics in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance. Other research interests include Hispanic, Haitian and Native American fiction, in particular writing which addresses representations of traumatic memory, and the quest for identity in diaspora fiction.

Abstract

‘Impossible Truths and Impenetrable Silences: Communicating Trauma and Testimony in Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker and Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies’

Both Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker and Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies address the conditions of the traumatic experience – the internal conflict and interconnection between victim, survivor, and perpetrator, caught between an inability to communicate traumatic memory and the inherent will to bear witness in the processes of survival. Notably, both texts are closely linked in contextual events; fictional accounts rooted in the political turmoil of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, under the tyrannical regimes of Haitian President François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. For Danticat, fractured recollection and temporal delay in the communication of trauma is crucial. The Dew Breaker depicts a delicate network of individuals, each connected by the experience of trauma and yet each facing an internal struggle in expressing their past suffering. In contrast, Alvarez engages with the cultivating of traumatic memory and witness accounts as an enabling factor in the construction of testimony, presenting a fictional account of the assassination of ‘Las Hermanas Mirabal’, sisters and ardent political activists set against Trujillo’s despotic regime. Fractured memories passed on between first and second generation victims signal the intrinsic complications in communicating traumatic experiences, and the subsequent long-lasting effects of trans-generational trauma. Second generation victims frequently attempt to come to terms with past suffering through fictional or artistic forms of expression. This then is the problem of the unknown, an attempt to piece together traumatic memory and testimonial despite the gaps and silences in a fragmented personal and collective history.

As such, this essay will consider the following questions; Are these fragmentations a symbol of individual choice – a prerequisite of human nature to block painful experiences from our memory? Or do they symbolise an enforced silence and unavoidable temporal delay – one which can only be filled by second generation, de-centralised victims of trauma? Moreover, is it ever possible for comprehensive survivor testimonials to be constructed through fictional means? And what are the difficulties faced by survivors of traumatic experiences in negotiating with the memories and testimonials of the dead?

Isabella Norton

Bio:

Isabella Norton is an MA student at the University of Kent, seeking a degree in English and American Literature. She earned a BA in English from Florida Atlantic University with a concentration in American Literature. She is originally from the United States, and now resides in Canterbury. Her research interests include graphic novels, LGBTQIA studies, disability studies, and feminist studies.

Abstract

‘“He was a Thing of Blood”: Blood, Wounds, Memory, and Identity in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus’

This article seeks to examine the role of blood in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, particularly in regards to the title character. Usually described in mechanical terms, the only organic component of Coriolanus seems to be his blood and the wounds that serve as evidence of his blood being spilled for Rome. Every character in the play, including Coriolanus himself, is obsessed with Coriolanus’s literal or metaphorical blood or wounds and constantly appeals to, makes demands of, and attempts to possess his blood or bloodied body in some way. In both the text and staged productions of Coriolanus, the motif of blood and wounds serves as a visual representation of his memories as a soldier and servant of Rome. These memories include all of the ideals entailed in battle, such as honor, gratitude, sacrifice, and physical prowess. For Coriolanus, his blood also provides a method for “inflicting [his] inside upon the outside world,” in accordance with Trotter’s theory on bodily fluids. By representing his memories, Coriolanus’s blood becomes bound up in themes of domination, identity, privilege, rights of ownership, and consumption. In Coriolanus’s often tumultuous and violent relationships with the Roman public, his political rivals, his mother, and his military rival/partner Aufidius, questions about who has the right to possess Coriolanus’s memories and what the effect of possessing these memories are raised. This obsession, which often edges towards frenzy, is also visualized in the actors’ performances, where Coriolanus and Aufidius can both be seen bathing their faces in Coriolanus’s blood at key moments in the play. The most impacting question posed in the play and observed in this paper arises from moments such as these: If you can reap someone’s memories, can you become them?

Louise Willis

Bio

Louise is currently reading for the MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent following completion of the BA in 2013. Her research interests are primarily focused on representations of women, gender, and sexuality, and she is also interested in the interdisciplinary nature of literature and medicine.

Abstract

‘The interrelationship between the literary and medical representations of cases of prodigious memory, as depicted by J. L. Borges, Alexander Luria, and Oliver Sacks.’

In 1959 the British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow delivered his inaugural lecture entitled ‘The Two Cultures’ in which he criticized the disparity between the intellectual disciplines of literature and science. One of the inherent aspects of the enduring literature-science debate is that literature appears to be unique in its ability to express human experience, whilst science is limited to defining or assessing human conditions. This article considers whether the fields of literature and scientific medicine are integrated or separated by comparing three texts on the phenomenon of prodigious (enormous) memory from both disciplines. The narratives include a fictional tale by the Argentine author J.L. Borges, a medical case study from the respected Russian neurologist A.R. Luria, and a case study documented by Oliver Sacks, Anglo-American professor of neurology and psychiatry; the discussion is also informed by new approaches in the rising field of medical humanities. The article compares the inherent features of prodigious memory as described in each account and concludes by eliciting a key component. It also discusses the fundamental reciprocity between remembering and forgetting and highlights the importance of dispensing with memories. It will argue that whilst Borges, Luria and Sacks each present their subjects’ extraordinary memory skills they also detail how these skills are countered by disability, thus revealing the inherent paradox of extreme memory, as simultaneously a gift yet also a curse. In particular, Sacks’ account demonstrates the connection between textual form and content, illustrating how the authorial agenda may shape the representation of its subject, in this case, prodigious memory. Finally, the article establishes a strong interface between literature and medicine. It emphasizes the value of imaginative fiction, explaining that literature is influenced by the science of its time but equally, it enriches medical science and encourages new approaches to understanding the highly complex subject of human memory.