Language and Trauma Representation in Latin American Short Fiction
Start Date
4-22-2020 10:00 AM
End Date
April 2020
Major Field of Study
English
Student Type
Undergraduate
Faculty Mentor(s)
Carlos Rodriguez, MA
Presentation Format
Poster Presentation
Abstract/Description
Trauma literary studies is the exploration of the psychological effects of trauma on the use of language. Literature provides cathartic expression; it has the power to heal both the writer and the reader from what might otherwise stay hidden from the psyche in the unconscious. Trauma obscures the mind’s full access to memory and language. As a mechanism to protect the survivor, disturbing memories along with language, get stored in the unconscious.“Language and Trauma Representation in Latin American Short Fiction” analyzes and compares how trauma is represented in three 20th Century short stories by Latinas: Luisa Mercedes Levinson’s “The Clearing (1983); Sylvia Lago’s “Homelife” (1991), and Gloria Stolk’s “Crickets and Butterflies”(1975). Utilizing formative pluralistic literary trauma theories set out by Cathy Caruth and Michelle Balaev, and psychoanalytical methodologies of Freud and Lacan, the stories are compared across specific tropes of dreams, metonymies, metaphors, and/or non- linear narratives to determine how language depicts the psyche in the integration of traumatic experiences.
Language and Trauma Representation in Latin American Short Fiction
Trauma literary studies is the exploration of the psychological effects of trauma on the use of language. Literature provides cathartic expression; it has the power to heal both the writer and the reader from what might otherwise stay hidden from the psyche in the unconscious. Trauma obscures the mind’s full access to memory and language. As a mechanism to protect the survivor, disturbing memories along with language, get stored in the unconscious.“Language and Trauma Representation in Latin American Short Fiction” analyzes and compares how trauma is represented in three 20th Century short stories by Latinas: Luisa Mercedes Levinson’s “The Clearing (1983); Sylvia Lago’s “Homelife” (1991), and Gloria Stolk’s “Crickets and Butterflies”(1975). Utilizing formative pluralistic literary trauma theories set out by Cathy Caruth and Michelle Balaev, and psychoanalytical methodologies of Freud and Lacan, the stories are compared across specific tropes of dreams, metonymies, metaphors, and/or non- linear narratives to determine how language depicts the psyche in the integration of traumatic experiences.
Comments
This presentation was accepted for the Scholarly and Creative Works Conference at Dominican University of California. The Conference was canceled due to the Covid-19 Pandemic