This edited collection argues that trauma in literature must be read through a theoretical pluralism that allows for an understanding of trauma's variable representations that include yet move beyond the concept of trauma as pathological and unspeakable.

Examines representations of political, psychological, and sexual violence in seven novels by American women.

This edited collection argues that trauma in literature must be read through a theoretical pluralism that allows for an understanding of trauma's variable representations that include yet move beyond the concept of trauma as pathological and unspeakable.

As a concept, 'trauma' has attracted a great deal of interest in literary studies. A key term in psychoanalytic approaches to literary study, trauma theory represents a critical approach that enables new modes of reading and of listening. It is a leading concept of our time, applicable to individuals, cultures, and nations. This book traces how trauma theory has come to constitute a discrete but influential approach within literary criticism in recent decades. It offers an overview of the genesis and growth of literary trauma theory, recording the evolution of the concept of trauma in relation to literary studies. In twenty-one essays, covering the origins, development, and applications of trauma in literary studies, Trauma and Literature addresses the relevance and impact this concept has in the field.

This collection features studies on trauma, literary theory, and psychoanalysis in women’s writing. It examines the ways in which literature helps to heal the wounded self, and it particularly concentrates attention on the way women explain the traumatic experiences of war, violence, or displacement. Covering a global range of women writers, this book focuses on the psychoanalytic role of literature in helping recover the voices buried by intense pain and suffering and to help those voices be heard. Literature brings the unconscious into being and focus, reconfiguring life through narration. These essays look at the relationship between traumatic experience and literary form.

"This book examines literary trauma theory from its foundations to its implementations and new possibilities. ... [A]n analysis that reconsiders the meaning and value of traumatic experience by demonstrating the diversity of its forms in contemporary Amerian novels in an effort to deepen the discussion of trauma beyond that of the disease-driven paradigm in literary criticism today. ... [The author's] model views trauma and the process of remembering within a framework that emphasizes the multiplicity of responses to an extreme experience and the importance of contextual factors in detemining the significance of the event. In order to demonstrate this new approach, [she focuses her] discussion on late-modern canonical and emergent American novels that deal with trauma. In analyzing the narrative methods authors employ to portray suffering, [she] found two major patterns: the use of landscape imagery to convey the effects of trauma and remembering, and the use of place as a site that shapes the protagonist's experience and perception of the world."--Introduction.

Her afterword serves as a decisive intervention in the ongoing discussions in and about the field.