Negativi di memoria. La rappresentazione del trauma nel romanzo del Novecento. Samuel Beckett, Georges Perec, Agota Kristof

The aim of this research is the analysis of the forms of representation of trauma in 20th century novel, in particular in the work of Samuel Beckett, Georges Perec and Agota Kristof. The core of the analysis is the examination of the linguistic and narrative processes of representation of trauma in the proses of the aforementioned authors, in order to define aesthetical categories able to describe the particular features of narratives whose leading aesthetic principle is the anti-narrative dimension of the traumatic memory. The analysis will dwell on the crucial relationship ࢠvital in all three authors ࢠbetween representation of trauma and development of narrative strategies that can be defined as ࢠdenegativeࢠ. The theoretical bases for the analysis of the literary texts are the anti-narrative theories of the traumatic memory, along with Ricà... urࢠs hermeneutics of narrative and the Psychoanalytical theory of language. Where possible, this is paralleled by a philological and genetic study of authorial manuscripts. In contrast with the prevailing view that, in 20th century novel, sees the triumph of anti-mimesis and the decline of the story, I seek to reassess the representative and testimonial character of 20th century literature. Since traumatic narratives are built by and hinge on gaps of language, my contention is that these gaps of language (amnesia, achrony, aphasia, Freudian slips, omissions and more articulated losses, as in Perecࢠs case) do in fact represent, mimetically, the apparently inaccessible reality of trauma. These new canons of representation do not state the impossibility of narrative; on the contrary they represent a challenge to silence, an attempt hidden in sharper and more complicated narrative conventions that keep a relationship of indirect origin with the conventions of the traditional novel ࢠin a way that one could call ࢠdenegativeࢠ.