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Author McGlothlin, Erin Heather.

Title Second-generation Holocaust literature : legacies of survival and perpetration / Erin McGlothlin
Published Rochester, NY : Camden House, 2006

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 254 pages) : illustrations
Series Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture
Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture
Contents "A tale repeated over and over again": Polyidentity and narrative paralysis in Thane Rosenbaum's Elijah visible -- "In Auschwitz we didn't wear watches": Marking time in Art Spiegelman's Maus -- "Because we need traces": Robert Schindel's Gebürtig and the crisis of the second-generation witness -- Documenting absence in Patrick Modiano's Dora Bruder and Katja Behrens's "Arthur Mayer or the silence" -- "Under a false name": Peter Schneider's Vati and the misnomer of genre -- My mother wears a Hitler mustache: Marking the mother in Niklas Frank and Joshua Sobol's Der Vater -- The future of Väterliteratur: Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser and Uwe Timm's Am Beispiel meines Bruders -- Conclusion: The "Glass wall": Marked by an invisible divide
Summary Among historical events of the 20th century, the Holocaust is unrivaled as the subject of both scholarly and literary writing. Literary responses include not only thousands of autobiographical and fictional texts written by survivors, but also, more recently, works by writers who are not survivors but nevertheless feel compelled to write about the Holocaust. Writers from what is known as the 'second generation' have produced texts that express their feeling of being powerfully marked by events of which they have had no direct experience. This book expands the commonly-used definition of 'second-generation literature, ' which refers to texts written from the perspective of the children of survivors, to include texts written from the point of view of the children of Nazi perpetrators. With its innovative focus on the literary legacy of both groups, it investigates how second-generation writers employ similar tropes of stigmatization to express their troubled relationships to their parents' histories. Through readings of nine American, German, and French literary texts, Erin McGlothlin demonstrates how an anxiety with signification is manifested in the very structure of second-generation literature, revealing the extent to which the literary texts themselves are marked by the continuing aftershocks of the Holocaust. Erin McGlothlin is assistant professor of German at Washington University in St. Louis
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-245) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject German literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature.
Children of Holocaust survivors, Writings of.
Children of Nazis, Writings of.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- German.
HISTORY -- Europe -- Germany.
Children of Holocaust survivors, Writings of.
Children of Nazis, Writings of.
German literature.
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) in literature.
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2006016730
ISBN 9781571136855
1571136851
1571133526
9781571133526