Pain and Narrative Shape: Beyond the Indocility of Trauma in Three Newfoundland Novels

• Main Author: Hernáez Lerena, María Jesús
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Canadian literature; testimony; trauma; gothic; environmental disasters; Newfoundland; literatura canadiense; testimonio; gótico; desastres medioambientales; Terranova; Allá; Canada; Isla de Terranova
• Online Access: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/oaiart?codigo=7235956

This article looks at trauma beyond the fixation on the limits of narrative as expressed in the mainstream theory of trauma in the 1990s, in the work of Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, among others. Its purpose is to achieve an appreciation of narrative as a navigable textual itinerary whose very flows and discontinuities are energized by a reconciliation (or lack thereof) with life’s shocking and incomprehensible moments. I build upon Amir Khadem’s rejection of the polarity between narrative and the incurable psychic wound in order to provide textual analyses of a corpus of three contemporary novels set in the context of a historically traumatized regional identity, that of Newfoundland in Canada: The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (2003), by Kenneth J. Harvey, February (2009), by Lisa Moore, and Sweetland (2014), by Michael Crummey. A revision of the role of genres traditionally used to describe historical and personal crises will help us observe how their conventions function within a context of outrage at the global and regional mismanagement of natural resources. Este artículo examina el concepto de trauma más allá de la fijación recurrente sobre los límites del lenguaje que se manifestaba en influyentes estudios de la década de 1990—de Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman y Dori Laub, entre otros—que definían el trauma como la antítesis de la narración misma. Cuestionamos esta interpretación para poder observar las narraciones como itinerarios textuales cuyos flujos y discontinuidades se manifiestan a través de las reacciones de los personajes con respecto a momentos desgarradores e incomprensibles de sus vidas. Partiendo de la propuesta de Amir Khadem, que sugiere dejar atrás la polaridad entre suceso traumático y narración, este artículo ofrece un análisis textual de tres novelas contemporáneas que giran en torno a una identidad regional canadiense traumatizada por su historia, la de la isla de Terranova: The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (2003), de Kenneth J. Harvey, February (2009), de Lisa ...