And You Shall Tell Your Children: The Intersection of Memory, Identity, and Narrative in Contemporary German Jewish Autofiction
Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation examines the autofictional works of three Jewish women writing in German, combining a close textual analysis with a narratological framework in order to understand how narrative, storytelling, and writing are used at both the diegetic and meta-levels to negotiate familial and cultural memory and to construct a contemporary German Jewish identity.The works analyzed herein-Barbara Honigmann's Roman von einem Kinde (1986), Damals, dann und danach (1999), and Ein Kapitel aus meinem Lebens (2004); Gila Lustiger's So sind wir (2005); and Katja Petrowskaja's Vielleicht Esther (2015)-are all written by second-or third-generation post-Holocaust Jews whose familial pasts include stories of exile, deportation, and internment, and whose individual presents are marked by trauma, intergenerational silence, and multiplex identities.As they navigate these heavy subjects, interweaving stories of their parents' and grandparents' lives alongside tales from their own childhoods and contemporary lives, each of these authors also thematizes narrative itself, rendering storytelling, writing, and literature as significant to these works as the stories and anecdotes contained within them.Using memory theory from a variety of scholars to examine this thematization of narrative and its connection to memory, identity, and family dynamics, I argue that, rather than being used to merely recount the past, narrative in these works becomes the very site in which familial and individual identity is constructed and construed.In addition, each chapter also centers on a narratological element that is particularly salient in each of the three authors' work, specifically: plot/narrativity, iv metanarration, and intertextuality.I then relate the thematization of narrative at the diegetic level to the author's own construction of narrative at the meta-level, using feminist narratological scholarship to explore the interrelation of content and form.This dissertation serves to further the ongoing scholarly conversation on memory, identity, and belonging in relation to contemporary German Jewish life and, in its conception of narrative as contingent on cultural context rather than as proceeding from universal norms, also contributes to postclassical feminist narratology and works to broaden our understanding of the role of narrative in human life.v Acknowledgments I would like to thank the amazing team of professors and scholars of the Georgetown University German Department.As an undergraduate, you introduced me to the culture and language of Germany, but, perhaps more importantly, you also helped me develop a keen and open mind that has been instrumental in anything I've ever achieved since my first German class in the spring of 2008.I'd also like to thank the members of my committee in particular, Friederike Eigler, Mary Helen Dupree, and Katrin Sieg.Only with the benefit of your encouragement, insight, and feedback was I able to complete this dissertation.Special thanks are also reserved for Marianna Pankova, who was the first person to convince me I could handle graduate school in the first place and whose unwavering support over the years has been invaluable.I am further indebted to my many friends and family members who have provided me with fortitude, reassurance, and kindness throughout my studies: my mother, Linda Killian; my siblings Holland, Stephen, Audra, and Blair; my fellow graduate students, Noelle Rettig and Emily Sieg Barthold; and the light of our department, Courtney Feldman, whose work I have disrupted nearly every day for the last four years.Lastly, I am unendingly grateful to Betsy Sciavolino, who has given me more support, encouragement, guidance, wisdom, and love than I ever thought possible.
Author: Doria Beth Killian
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3006389163