Both W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) and the Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr (1954-) were born too late to know directly the violence of the Second World War and the Holocaust, but these traumatic events are a persistent presence in their work. In a series of close readings of key prose texts, Dora Osborne examines the different ways in which the traces of a traumatic past mark their narratives. By focusing on the authors' use of visual and topographical tropes, she shows how blind spots and inhospitable places configure signs of past violence, but, ultimately, resist our understanding. Whilst...
Both W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) and the Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr (1954-) were born too late to know directly the violence of the Second World ...
In recent years, the discourse of memory - and of German memory culture in particular - has become increasingly concerned with questions of the archive. An archive can refer to a physical place, the material found there, or the system that orders this material; in its broadest sense, it might refer to something public (records housed in a municipal building), or something private (photographs in a family album). The material and documentary qualities of the archive confer on it an authenticating function attributed only cautiously to memory, but theories of the archive have questioned the...
In recent years, the discourse of memory - and of German memory culture in particular - has become increasingly concerned with questions of the archiv...
