Between the Urge to Know and the Need to Deny: Trauma and Ethics in Contemporary British and American Literature (Anglistische Forschungen)

Trauma and ethics are two terms inextricably linked. This book is concerned with trauma and its representations in contemporary British and American literature within the wider context of the ethics of writing, reading, and interpreting trauma and trauma narratives. More particularly, it analyses the connections between trauma, gender, identity, and genre issues. The contributors to this volume study the various modes of writing, genres, and generic conventions which have been used and/or subverted to represent traumas of different kinds in a selection of contemporary British and American novels. This collection will consequently deal with one of the most important concerns of contemporary academic criticism, namely, the ethical implications of the representation of trauma. Moreover, gender issues will also be given special attention, since many contemporary novels in English focus on the articulation of traumas resulting from the inequalities and abuses connected with identity and gender.