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>The things we carry: Trauma and the aesthetic in the contemporary United States novel (Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Art Spiegelman, Tim O'Brien).
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The things we carry: Trauma and the aesthetic in the contemporary United States novel (Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Art Spiegelman, Tim O'Brien).
The Things We Carry: Trauma and the Aesthetic in the Contemporary US Novel examines the aesthetic representation of trauma in a selection of American novels from 1963 to the present. My project seeks to contribute to a growing body of trauma literature and criticism by interrogating the role that the aesthetic qualities of literature play in depicting trauma in fiction.; I explore how trauma constitutes a common thread in American literature in the period following the 1960s. For the purposes of this study, I focus on the American traumas of the Kennedy assassination, slavery's legacy, the Vietnam War, and September 11th as represented in fiction. The dissertation includes novels by such authors as Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, Art Spiegelman, and Tim O'Brien. It also draws from trauma theory---including the work of Cathy Caruth, Kali Tal, and Judith Herman---to create a framework for explicating trauma within the novels.; Trauma, by definition, is an event which is so shocking that it shatters the victim and his or her world view. In order to reconcile the trauma to this altered reality---clinically, to assimilate trauma---a narrative of the event must be constructed. While creating this narrative, often the victim may relive the event in such a way that he or she will re-experience the feelings and sensations of the trauma. The challenge for the author imaginatively engaging with historical trauma is to render convincingly these feelings in creating a new narrative.; These writers have created a body of trauma literature that reflects and mimics trauma and traumatic recovery. In their novels, they provide commentary on and contribute to the way we shape the national narrative of traumatic events, how we understand these events, and how they haunt us. These novels also provide a way for us to theorize how trauma can be conveyed and made comprehensible to oneself and to others. Finally, these novels provide a rich interaction between reader and storyteller, engaging the reader in the depiction of traumatic events---the closest the reader can get to the traumatic event itself, after all, is through the aesthetic recreation of it.
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